Volume 331

DVDS
The Spiderwick Chronicles (2 spuds)
Vantage Point (1.5 Spuds)
No Reservations (1.5 Spuds)

TV
Saxondale (2 Spuds)
The Kumars At # 42 (2 Spuds)
Wire In The Blood (2 Spuds)
Graham Norton Show (2 Spuds)

SPUDITORIAL

Wimbledon Really Tuckered Me Out

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

A BELATED HAPPY CANADA DAY

This is the last day of an extra long weekend. We should all try to take 4-day weekend whenever we can get away with it. Mainly because we’re all so freaking stressed out from the 5 day work week grind that two days just doesn’t seem like enough somehow. Especially for those of you who are heading to the cottage every weekend. What the hell do you get? Traffic misery and woe on Friday night. Traffic misery and woe redux on Sunday afternoon. And what do you get in between… well there’s shopping, cooking, eating, fix this, install that and a couple of hours on Saturday evening to play cards with your kids, who get bored after the first few hands and end up playing video games, leaving you with the incessant clamour of Super Mario music ringing in your ears. Well don’t feel bad. It’s the same in the city, at least here at Spud Central, where the Wife sees the long weekend as a chance to tear down and rebuild some part of Spud Central. This weekend it’s the triangular shaped walls that line the stairs down to the basement. It’s always a bigger job than she thinks it will be and in order to complete the job she needs a whole bunch of stuff that she can’t get because it’s one of those holidays that retailers actually take seriously…Canada Day.

Oh Canada, In spite of the useless politicians and the overinflated costs of just about everything. In spite of the nasty ass winter storms that blow all season, and the muggy humid days that we seem to have been having a more lot of. In spite of our tendency to be lumped in with the crippled giant to the south. And in spite of the fact that my bit of Canada, Toronto, has pretty much turned into Valhalla for gangs and tongs of all shapes and sizes, I can still look out the window on a morning like this where the sun is shining and the sky is azure blue and filled with harmless looking clouds and say to myself, in all honesty, I’m living in the best country around.

Tonight we’re going to The Boy’s for a barbecue and fireworks, because the The Boy has pretty much the best view in the city of the city, which means we won’t be just watching the fireworks down at Ashbridges Bay, but just about everywhere in the city that someone shooting them off.

So Happy Canada day to everyone. Hope yours was as good as mine. Now I have to go and clean out the eaves troughs, because reality may suck sometimes, but it still has to be dealt with.

THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES (2 SPUDS)

This was a request from the Wife, and not normally the kind of movie I would glom onto on my own. As it turns out, the Wife had pretty good instincts. This is a pure fantasy movie about a mom and her three kids who re-locate (post divorce) from New York to an old family home, somewhere in the boondocks. The house, originally owned by their great great uncle is quite a weird place, but that’s all part of the plot, so I won’t give you any details, other than that the family has walked into the middle of a centuries long battle between the forces of good and evil.

That sounds kind of ominous, and it is. This film really and truly takes you to another world in much the same way as the Harry Potter movies do (but without the trillion dollar budget), and it’s really well put together on just about every level.

The Spiderwick Chronicles was obviously intended for kids, but it worked just fine for the Wife and me, here in the kid-challenged paradise that is Spud Central.

VANTAGE POINT (Almost 2 XL SPUDS)

This is one of those movies that tells its story by playing the same basic scene over and over again from the different points of view of each of the main characters. The scene is a political assassination in Spain. Now if what I just told you makes the movie sound a bit dull and repetitive, trust me, it’s anything but. It does a fantastic job of revealing the whole story bit by bit and each bit has a twist of one kind or another. The screenplay was written by a guy named Barry Levy and it’s his first produced work. Pretty impressive debut.

This movie was obviously inspired by the great Kurosawa film, Rashomon, which was structured in the same sort of way. I kind of wish people would take more chances on movies with a unique structure like Run Lola Run, Insomnia and Memento.

The movie stars a lot of good people like Dennis Quaid as a secret service legend, William Hurt as the President, Matthew Fox as Dennis’ partner, and the great Forrest Whittaker as a tourist who gets caught up in the goings on.

Vantage Point is great action thriller that had me on the edge of my seat. I know that sounds corny, but I just got a new easy chair for Spud Central and it’s a glider, so I’m kind of always on the edge of my seat anyway.

NO RESERVATIONS (2 SPUDS)

This is a vehicle movie for Catharine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart, a couple of Hollywood’s prettiest people. It was kind of billed as a comedy, but it’s really more of a drama with Aaron Eckhart’s character providing a bit of lightness.

It’s essentially the story of a work obsessed chef in a hoity toity Bleeker Street restaurant (you can tell by the black market truffles that cost $2200 a pound), who, through a tragic accident, inherits custody of her very young niece, played by Abagail Breslin, and at the same time has to cope with the dog eat medium rare dog world of her profession as the restaurant owner brings in a sous-chef (Aaron). So there’s a lot of stuff on her plate.

In addition to being a pretty decent drama, this movie gives you an inside look at the kitchen of a busy upscale eatery and that’s kind of interesting. Zeta-Jones character is kind of a work obsessed, joyless honcho, who’s feared without bearing fearful, a quality I assume a lot of successful chefs need to have. Eckhart’s character is a great looking, easy going opera loving northern (blonde) Italian.

This movie was nice, poignant, well-constructed and even came with the requisite cornball happy ending. I liked all the characters, especially Aaron, who seems to just get better and better as he goes along.

BRIT TV – A REFRESHING CHANGE FROM THE TV WE ALL GREW UP WITH

Now that I have BBC Canada in my cable package, I have become a rather large fan of several of the shows they broadcast. These shows don’t really have any equivalent in North America and I guess that’s why I like them so much. What I find with British shows is that they kind of grow on you. I think that’s because the quality of the writing that powers these shows tend to be more sophisticated than the writing on all but a few North American shows, and it just takes that much longer for our little entertainment brains to realize and process that. Nonetheless, once you’ve watched a couple of episodes you find that the entertainment value of these shows ranges from moderately to vastly superior to the stuff we tend to usually watch.

SAXONDALE (2 SPUDS)

This is a very dry comedy starring Steve Coogan who plays a kind of know it all ex eighties power rock band roadie with anger issues, named Tommy Saxondale, who has retired into some small part of England and gotten himself a bug and rodent killing franchise. Steve’s character is absolutely fascinating, with a brain full of useless and pointless knowledge that he picked up from voracious reading on the endless rock tour road. He’s a slave to all things seventies and eighties, drives a not quite Shelby Mustang and tends to push everything a bit too far but is smart enough to always regret it. This is easily one of the most complex comic characters ever created for television and Coogan is an absolute hoot to watch, because he’s really smart and really dumb at the same time and that’s hard to pull off for just about anybody but the best.

THE KUMARS AT #42 (2 SPUDS)

This show is a broader sitcom than Saxondale about an Indian family living in Wembley, a suburb of London, who host a live TV talk show in a studio they have built in their back garden. It’s pretty weird premise, but the actors are all amazing and every episode features two real celebrities who get interviewed on the show. Each of the characters in the family is a living caricature of some sort of stereotypical, Indian immigrant. Sanjiv the son is a hip English guy wannabe. The father is an insurance salesman and probably sleeps with his suit on. The mother is doting and always cooking, and the grandmother is a wisecracking oversexed elder. This is a deadly combination and these actors all work extremely well together.

WIRE IN THE BLOOD (2 SPUDS)

This is a very successful series that has been running since 2003. What’s unique about it is that each episode, at the least the ones we see over here, are two hours long. This is a crime series whose major protagonist is a police psychologist named Tony Hill. The stories are complex to start with, but made even more so by the fact that they are filtered through the psychologist’s eye. The Tony Hill character is also a profiler, but one with credibility among the cops he works with.

This stuff is pretty dark and explicit for the most part. The Wife, for example finds it all a bit heavy for her taste, and, sometimes I have to admit, so do I. But generally speaking it’s pretty solid and entertaining, like most high-end British shows.

THE GRAHAM NORTON SHOW (2 SPUDS)

This is a talk show unlike anything we will ever see over here. The host is a flamboyant and outwardly gay Irish comedian with a razor sharp wit and a real rapport with his audience. The guests are all famous and infamous people who are encouraged to tell their raunchiest stories and use whatever four letter words they like. It’s a hell of a lot of fun for the guests, the audience and the viewers.

They do skits from time to time, but these are things like using an audience member to make a 1980’s style German porn film. The guests come on in pairs and are usually connected to each other in some way or other. But Graham, in addition to being very funny and self-deprecating, is also a great interviewer and manages to pull a lot of good stuff out of his guests.

Although it’s an acquired taste, The Graham Norton Show still a hell of a lot more entertaining than any North American talk show you can think of.

THE SPORT SPUD SPEAKETH

WIMBLEDON (10 LB BAG ‘O SPUDS)

The final match between Raphael Nadal and Roger Federer. Federer is defending five straight wins. Nadal is out to prove he’s a great all round tennis player ( ie hard court, clay and grass). I start watching at 9:37 AM. I stop watching at 4:39 PM. I can’t believe I spent a whole day of my life watching tennis. Of course there were two long rain delays, in which the Wife and I went out and did some shopping, but I never missed a single shot.

There are, quite simply, not enough Spuds to give this match. For the quality of play. For the fierceness of the competition. For the sheer human drama of two human beings doing the most important thing in their respective lives and absolutely needing to win. This was as close a match as you will ever see. The final set went 16 games and was decided (in Nadal’s favour), by a return shot about three inches below the net.

I was completely fried at the end of this one. And that’s about as high a compliment as anyone can pay any sporting event. Sports just keeps getting better and better. I’m looking forward to a post-Olympics coma.

Post match quote from Waldin, who is the biggest tennis fan I know.

“Jim, That really was incredible. Maybe the best tennis I ever saw. John McEnroe thought so. A sad day for Roger, but he fought like a champion right to the end.  What an athlete Nadal is. He did unbelievable things on court today. That tennis match shows you exactly why I love that game.”

Volume 330

SEEN & NOTED

DVDS
Flawless (1 Spud)
10,000 B/C. (1.5 Spuds)
Definitely Maybe (1.5 Spuds)

TV
BURN UP (2 XL Spuds)
The NBA Finals (2 Spuds)
The US Open (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 last couple of weeks have been among the most entertaining I have experienced in many moons as a watcher of the wall of light, the Boob Tube, The T & V, The Idiot Box, whatever you choose to call it. It has been a thing of real wonder these past few weeks, as it has brought me some of the greatest real life drama going on these days.

There is a new level of intensity in the world. Mostly it’s a reaction to all the weird shit that’s going on with hurricanes, floods, monsoons, tsunamis and earthquakes. I’m surprised that there hasn’t also been a major volcanic eruption. That would be the real icing on the cake.

But sadly, or happily take your pick, most of us within the environs of Spud Central have it pretty good. The most we have to worry about is a lightning strike in a freaky 5 minute thunderstorm that may roll through as our moderately low pressure changes to moderately high pressure. We can only look on in disbelief at what a disaster area pretty much most of the rest of the world has become lately. I honestly wake up every morning and thank whatever Higher Power is running things that it is ignoring us for the moment.

But seeing all this weirdness, even on the big giant 42 inch Aquos, it still feels a bit unreal. What would it be like to live somewhere where your home and your life can be washed away by an unstoppable force of nature? Sitting in a house that was built by the third little pig…sitting on a big rock called the Laurentian Shield… sitting in the most peaceful country on the planet, I just feel so damn lucky to be able to just sit here and write about all the amazing stuff I watched on TV, as opposed to all the terrible crap that happened to my village/town/city region/country because of some freak of nature or politics that I neither invited nor could un-invite.

I hope you all feel the same way.

Having said that, I turn back to the matters at hand. There were three or four big TV events that made me a happy camper in Spudland over the past few weeks.

Event 1. The NBA Finals. Now I know a lot of you couldn’t give a damn about basketball. But this is the finals and it was a doozy. It was a matchup between two teams who, between them, have won more NBA titles than any other teams in the history of the NBA. The LA Lakers and the Boston Celtics. The Lakers have Kobe Bryant who was voted regular Season MVP and coach Phil Jackson who has nine championship rings. The Celtics, who last season finished with the worst record in the NBA, have gone through a major retooling and are loaded up with studs like Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, James Posey and great little point guard Rajon Rondo. They are coached by former NBA player Doc Rivers, and between all these guys there is not one single championship ring.

But Boston, in just one season went from the worst team in the NBA to the best in just about every team category you can name. The Lakers had a great season too, in a much tougher division, but the real question here was, did the Lakers have enough offense to put enough points on the board against Boston’s smothering defense. The short answer was no way Jose. While the series went six games, it was obvious from the get go that Boston was playing outstanding two way basketball, with the emphasis on defense. Their four wins were all convincing while the Lakers’ two wins were squeakers. The Boston strategy… simply this: don’t let Kobe Bryant into the lane, which means don’t let him get close to the basket, because he will just run up the score and get you into foul trouble while he’s doing it. Make him a jump shooter and he won’t be having any those 50 plus point nights he’s famous for. And if he doesn’t have any of those, we’ll it’s yours to lose. In the fifth game Boston slacked off this strategy a bit and allowed the Lakers to gain a commanding 24 point halftime lead. But then in the second half of that game, they slowly, painstakingly battled back, making their effort the largest second half comeback in NBA history. On Father’s day, when nobody exiles yours truly to the little upstairs TV, Boston put on one of the most dazzling shows of dominance I have ever seen in finals game, not just winning the title but absolutely crushing the Lakers into cracks in the parkay floor, beating them by close to 40 points, which is really sad when you consider that a 20 point win is considered to be a blowout. This was like a complete nuking.

In spite of the fact that Boston is in our division, and I’m supposed to be a Raptors fan, I was really happy for these guys. The effort they put forth taking care of Detroit and then the Lakers was absolutely outstanding. They are a great bunch of basketball millionaires, all considered to be really good guys in the league. And, of course it goes without saying that nobody like to see the Lakers have their asses handed to them more than me and maybe Mel the Girlfriend, who hates the Lakers because they beat out her San Antonio Spurs to get to the finals.

Event 2: BURN UP (2XL SPUDS) This is a 2 Part Mini Series which looked to be a British/US co-production and was one of the most powerful and relevant dramas I have seen on TV in quite some time.

It’s essentially a story about climate change and the need to address greenhouse gas emissions and it was extremely effective, because it scared the shit out of this spud. It’s an extremely complex thriller, well put together and laced with a good deal of really up to date science. It’s filled with a-List talent including Bradley Whitford (The West Wing) as a US oil lobbyist, Rupert Penry-Jones, (Spooks), who has my vote for the next James Bond, and Neve Campbell as conniving eco terrorist.

The US, as usual, comes across as the Big Bad Wolf in all of this intrigue, and rightly so. As Bradley Whitford points out, the US sees global warming (from excessive greenhouse gas emissions) and its climate change consequences, which are being seen everywhere these days, as a key part of its foreign policy – a non-military way for them to maintain control of the world. A little far-fetched, but nevertheless the bulk of the content of this extremely intelligent and insightful drama got me thinking pretty deeply about just how bad things are out there. This film should and hopefully will be required viewing for a wide range of university courses in both the physical and social sciences.

I’m sure were going to see a lot more stuff like this in the months and years to come. And I couldn’t be more supportive. Anything that bring attention to a situation that could be the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it, needs as much awareness building as possible.

Event 3: The US OPEN. A while ago, Tiger Woods, the odds on favourite to win this event, was quoted as saying that he did not believe that a 10 handicap golfer could break 100 on the Torry Pines course on which this year’s US Open would be played. This, of course, was all the provocation that NBC needed to create a TV show that featured celebrity golfers like Justin Timberlake (who shot a 98), Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, (who shot an 84) and a couple of other dudes (who shot over 100), just to prove him wrong. I caught a little of it, and it was boring TV. But the US Open itself was anything but.

On the first two days the three top ranked golfers in the world, Adam Scott, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods played in the same threesome, which added all kinds of gusto to the first two days of the tournament, which are usually a bit of a yawn. As it turned out both Phil and Adam were pretty much out of contention at the end of the second day. Playing with Tiger can be quite exhausting.

Anyway, I’m not going to go on and on about the amazingness of Tiger Woods, who has now not only proven that he’s better than the best golfer in the world, and on his way to being the best that ever was. He’s better than them all on one leg. This was exactly the kind of tournament I hoped it would be. Tight, taut and exciting right up to the very end, which came on the Monday as Tiger edged out 45 year old Rocco Mediate in a 19 hole Playoff. This is exactly why sports fans are sports fans. And it was a great third Event for a memorable hat trick and enjoyment by the ton over here at Spud Central.

ON DVD

10000 BC (1.5 SPUDS)

This movie is pretty much a rip of Apocalypto, except for the fact that Apocalypto is one hell of a lot better movie. Granted this film has some pretty awesome CGI effects where Apocalypto was made up mostly of in-camera stuff. 10000 BC was conceived and directed by Roland Emmerich who has been kicking around the higher end of the Hollywood film empire since he did Stargate and Independence Day with his then partner Dean Devlin. He’s definitely an A-List director and this film shows that he obviously knows his stuff. The only problem, as I said was that though the story took place at a different time and a different part of the world, it’s exactly the same as Apocalypto. Guy is big time hunter in his tribe. Tribe gets plundered by slavers who take them to the big giant temple they are building to honour their poobah. He manages to put together an army of tribes from his neighbourhood and off they go to get back his people, including, of course, his true love. Yadda Yadda.

While it is a rip of another very good film, (Apocalypto), it is a good rip in its own way and is highly watchable. There’s a bit of mumbo jumbo witchcraft, and everybody looks pretty human, as opposed to primative hairy caveman-like. If you want to be technical about it, the humans were all, maybe 200-300 BC and the animals (like wooly mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers and raptors in the jungle) were anywhere from 1 Million to 10 million BC, so old Roland is taking quite a bit of license here. But it’s an action packed flick with huge sets and cool creatures and it’s obviously aimed at audiences who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the time frame. Call it a big budget OK time waster. But if you really want to see this same story done by a real cinematic genius, you should go rent Apocalypto instead.

DEFINITELY MAYBE (1.5 SPUDS)

This is a cute film which stars Ryan Reynolds (the new Ben Affleck) as a sqeaky clean mid-western rube who comes to New York to work on Bill Clinton’s election campaign, falls in love a couple of times, has a precocious daughter, and is pretty unhappy for reasons that are made abundantly clear in the twist on “When Harry met Sally” screenplay.

Every movie I see these days is so derivative, it’s really hard to write about them as original creations. I don’t blame the filmmakers or the writers for this. I blame the chickenshit studios who have come to believe that the public needs to be spoon-fed the same old crap over and over again and that if you give them something a little new and different they will stay away in droves. Yeah, that might happen for a while. But make an investment in innovation, for God’s sake. I’m so tired of watching movies that don’t just remind me of other movies, but are actually flawed clones of those movies.

OK, having got all that off my chest, Definitely Maybe was really nice, well written, well acted and regurgitated from just about every other romantic comedy I have ever seen. So in that respect it was completely and utterly predictable. On the other hand, what can you do?

Volume 329

DVDS
Rendition (2 Spuds)
National Treasure 2 (1.5 Spuds)

SPUDITORIAL
A PERFECT DAY AT SPUD CENTRAL

THE END OF SEASON TV AWARDS

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

COUCH POTATO CHRONICLES WEB SITE UPDATE

One day you’re sitting around shivering with a couple of layers on, and the next day you’re sweating your ass off. Springtime in the big smoke. The web site update is as follows. I am in the wait part of the hurry up and wait. I am waiting for instructions from the web site gods so that I can set up my pages. The web site gods are otherwise occupied. So I carry on blogging. Some day the gods will gaze upon me and send forth instructions. I have faith.

A PERFECT DAY AT SPUD CENTRAL

It was a perfect day today. I got up and opened all the windows that I could, because the mugginess of the past 4 or 5 days had disappeared. I spackled and sanded two doorways in the basement in preparation for painting them. I always like to do something around the house every day, mostly as a change from sitting here playing on the computer, but also because the Wife is working a lot these days and should really be able to come home and chill when she’s done. Plus, it’s my house and I like to keep it neat and tidy, and lately, freshly painted.

Back in my office, I put the finishing touches on a web site that I have created for myself and two of my associates to help us market ourselves more effectively. I got a bunch of invoices ready for one of my clients, cause you gotta pay the bills. I talked to my pal Mike Ziegler on the phone for a while as he filled me in on the politics we are facing dealing with the client I am helping he out with. I had a big bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios with bananas and strawberries then talked to a potential new client, an executive placement firm that wants to re-define their positioning in the marketplace and upgrade the look and feel of all their web site and corporate material. I spent quite a while before that studying their web site so I could sound informed and insightful.

Then I took of f for my mid-day jaunt on the spudcycle. I went to Staples to return a cordless mouse I bought three months ago and would only work when it felt like it, which was not most of the time. I found out, much to my chagrin, that they only have a 30 day return policy on mice. So I headed on down to Carbon Computing on Queen street and bought me a new mighty Mac Mouse, which I probably should have done in the first place, except for the fact that I am an idiot about certain things. New toys being one of them. I have a whole box full of stuff that I thought would be really neat to have and turned out to be anything but.

On the way back home I stopped into a hoity toity bake shop ad Queen & Logan and bought a $5 loaf of oregano/rosemary bread and made a really high priced roast beef sandwich when I got home. The jury’s still out on whether or not the bread was worth 5 clams.

I spent the rest of the afternoon doing research on the web and preparing a email for my potential client that had samples of my brochure work, a link to my site and to the site of Shawn Willings, the web and flash designer I want to work with on this project. I also sent her a strategy form and some information on Search Engine Optimization and Marketing, which most business people know woefully little about.

The Wife showed up around 5 PM and announced that we were going to look at a car she had seen at Beach Fine Cars down at Queen and Wineva. It was a 2006 Honda hybrid with only 40,0oo km on it, that looked brand new, still had a year on its warranty, apparantly gets 100 kilometers on four litres of gas and runs on battery power under 50 km per hour. We took it for a ride and were converted. We bought it. It was even more comfortable than our Matrix. It’s the first car that we have owned outright since the 1980s. If I told you how little we paid for it, you’d pass out. Just one of those things that come along once in a blue moon and the Wife spotted it. She’s good to have around in a lot of ways. The dealer even offered to keep it at his house for three months until our current lease is up. This saves us an unbelievable amount of hassling around in the summer with assholes at car dealerships, which is fine with me because I expect to be very busy.

When we got home we celebrated our good car hunting fortune with a great chicken and fruit salad courtesy of the Wife and watched Jeopardy and the first real competition episode of “So You Think You Can Dance” and were treated to two hours of the best entertainment on television. We’re huge fans of this show. We don’t have a particular rooting interest, we just love to see these kids blossoming into world class professionals right before our eyes. It kind of restores your faith in human nature to come extent. It is also TV being useful for a change. Rewarding both the performers and the viewers, not just one or the other.

After that I had a shower and thought I would write about the day I had today. So here I am sitting in my office with a big glass of cold water, my sunflower seeds and a cool evening breeze doing what I like to do best. Tap, tap, tapping away in front the little wall of light that is my Mac.

It was a good day and living proof that some days, as indeed, better than others.

Tomorrow, the US Open at Torry Pines begins. Tiger’s back from rehabbing his surgically repaired knee and is playing with Phil Mickelson and Adam Scott, ranked one two and three in the world golf rankings. This could be another one of those great days, that don’t actually involved the purchasing of a vehicle, or me going anywhere at all in fact.

NATIONAL TREASURE 2

This is pretty much a clone of National Treasure 1, starring Nicholas Cage and Jon Voight, Helen Mirren, Ed Harris, Harvey Kietel and a couple of other people whose names I can’t recall and frankly even if I could be bothered looking them up you probably wouldn’t know them anyway.

In this movie Nick is some sort of historical Treasure Hunter with seemingly unlimited resources at his disposal, a sidekick who knows how to do just about anything with a PDA or a laptop, including a lot for stuff that’s way against the law and a soon to be ex-wife who is just a sucker for a great adventure.

The only thing you have to remember about this movie is that it’s from Disney, so it will be fast paced, mildly amusing, fun for the whole family and extremely patriotic. Seems like the plots of both these movies have a lot to do with the early history of the United States and the reputation of Nick’s family, who apparently date way back to pre-confederation days.

While Nick is no Indiana Jones, the two franchises have a very similar feel to them in that there are a lot of gizmos at work, a central mystery that needs to be solved and a hidden treasure that needs to be unearthed. While I felt a little too old and mature to be watching National Treasure, I found it quite delightful to watch the whole thing come together, complete with amazing coincidences, a coupled of real needle-in-a-haystack lucky breaks and intuitive problem solving far beyond the puny abilities of mere mortals. In other words a bunch of crazy coked up Hollywood screenwriters throwing the most outrageous crap at the wall, writing up whatever sticks, then stitching it together into a barely comprehensible plot, shooting it all then editing it in keystone cops fashion to create, what else, but the perfect Disney action adventure flick.

National Treasure is far from a great movie, but if you want to just take several deep breaths and let go of your cinematic sensibilities for a while, you can sit back and be entertained by some very entertaining actors doing their best to entertain you in the name of old Walt.

RENDITION (2 SPUDS)

You can argue the issue of American Paranoia since 2001 either way. On the one side you could say that the Yanks are exceedingly paranoid and treat anyone with even the slightest tint to their skin as a potential terrorist threat. One the other side you could argue that this diligence has actually been responsible for the fact that there hasn’t really been a full blown terrorist attack on US soil in what’s going on 7 years now. However you choose to argue it, Rendition, by the very reason of how it chose to depict its various characters, seems to be displaying an odd twist on the former.

This is essentially the story of a Syrian born but US raised agro-scientist who is detained under the broad scope of powers given to the National Security Agency, flown back to Syria questioned and tortured six ways from Sunday. It’s not pretty. His pregnant wife in Chicago, is trying to move heaven and earth to find out if he’s still alive, but the bureaucratic machinery of Washington DC isn’t about to let her know anything. An NSA field agent, beautifully underplayed by Jake Gyllenhaal, is assigned, to oversee the interrogation, by his boss, a primo bitch NSA assistant director, played by Meryl Streep, who is getting real good at being the bitch in charge.

I won’t tell you anything of the plot here. But I will tell you that my impression is that this sort of crap goes on all the time in America these days, and the movie really begs the question, how much paranoia is too much.

Rendition is a tough movie to watch for a lot of reasons. One is that it’s pretty brutal in its depiction of the interrogation. Two is that you really can’t help but get pissed of at how the hopelessly complex bureaucracy in Washington is being used as a political tool by just about everyone. And lastly because it wasn’t really that difficult to imagine that happening to someone you know, which is a sad fact in and of itself.

THE END OF THE SEASON AWARDS

Every year around this time, the regular TV season comes to an end. Actually, it usually ends in April but the writer’s strike has delayed things for a bit. And since it doesn’t cost me anything, I like to give out some award to the deserving and not so deserving shows.

So what I do here is haul out the big black binder (Binder #3) that houses printouts of all my columns, leaf through them, since my memory is seriously damaged by the pressures of urban living, and check out all the stuff I wrote about. This is nostalgic for me, which takes the edge off the fact that’s is a sad necessity. But I digress.

THE BIG HYPE SMALL ACTION AWARD
CANE – This was supposed to be a big time vehicle for Jimmy Smits, but it was too soapy for well, just about everybody.

TOO CONTROVERSIAL FOR TV AWARD
K’VILLE – This was a real gutsy effort to create a cop show whose stories revolved around the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina In New Orleans. I loved it. But I don’t live in America and have to feel the same level of shame that disaster created in a lot of people.

COOL FUN…HOPE IT COMES BACK AWARD
CHUCK – Sort of sci fi, sort of spy, lots of fun. This was a big budget series produced by McG, about a computer nerd who ends up with a bunch of critical info in his head and reluctantly becomes a spook. Almost silly, but that’s what made it great.

BIG YAWN AWARD
This could go to quite a few shows like Dirty, Sexy Money, Pushing Daisies, or QuarterLife. But I have to lay it on JOURNEYMAN, a lame-ass time travel series that was a predictable as me needing a haircut every couple of months.

BIG GENIUS AWARD
CHUCK LORRE, Creator of Two and a Half Men, which was far and away the best comedy on TV and this season and The Big Bang Theory, which I think is even funnier than 2.5 Men. Comedy is the hardest thing to do on TV, maybe anywhere, but these shows are pure genius.

BEST IMPORT AWARD
Now that I have the Rogers VIP package, I get to see a lot more British shows than ever.
My short list includes: The Kumars at #42, Wire In The Blood, Primeval, The Gil Mayo Mysteries, & Saxondale. But the award goes to SPOOKS, which is the continuation of MI -5. Every week this show manages to come up with some really menacing looking stuff, made that much scarier by the fact that most of it is probably happening in England today.

THE BEST OF THE BEST DRAMA AWARD or Big Kahuna
This was a kind of no brainer this year, even though it was a pretty good year all things considered. House was interesting as usual, Boston Legal was brilliant as usual, The Tudors was a delightful surprise, New Amsterdam was fascinating, Canterbury’s Law was solid as were NCIS, Intelligence, Numbers. Eli Stone was a refreshing newcomer, and Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles was absolutely outstanding as were Mad Men and The Riches.

But this years’ Big Kahuna award goes directly to DAMAGES, the amazing FX network series that had us completely and utterly riveted to the screen for an hour every week.

Here’s why its my choice: (from Volume 326)

“Most recently I’ve become addicted to the latest FX Networks series called Damages. This is a series about all the dirty rotten lowdown stuff that happens when there’s a couple billion dollars on the line in a class action lawsuit. It’s absolutely the most compellingly watchable TV series I have seen yet. Mainly because the storytelling that’s going on here is so clever, and secondarily, because all the stuff it takes to really bring a great story to life is there in spades. Perfect casting. Great characters, each and everyone of which has a hidden agenda. Complete ruthlessness…there’s nothing politically correct or dumbed down going on here. Your have to be awake and smart to follow and enjoy this show. It’s definitely not for the trailer trash Jerry Springer-Maury Pauvich crowd.

And that’s the real point here. Television is so popular, that it’s now possible for intelligent people to be able to enjoy TV as frequently as they like without having their intelligence slapped around by prime time soap operas, with plastic characters and stupid story lines. This, and the availability of just about every important sporting event (for certain people like me) are the two main advantages of the billion channel universe.”

I rest my case and the awards for this year.

See you next time.

VOLUME 328

DVDS
The Great Debaters (2 Spuds)
The Andromeda Strain (2 Spuds)

TV
Durham County (Duh)

SPUDITORIAL
Life’s A Bitch When You Don’t
Have Anything To Complain About

THE SPORT SPUD SPEAKS
Nothing this time. But Looking forward to
Celtics/Lakers NBA Finals

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

COUCH POTATO CHRONICLES WEB SITE UPDATE

I got all the info I needed to deal with managing the web site content for myself. Now all I have to do is get on the old learning curve and figure out how to use it. I’ve done a couple of things like put in my masthead and some text. Mostly I need to learn how to organize and link. But that will come. The other extenuating factor is that I am starting to get crazy busy in my other life. You know the one that pays the bills.
In the meantime, I’m still on the blog.

Meanwhile the wife and my sister Sharon, who are good buds, have decided to take a trip down east this summer to visit Cath Finnie in Cape Breton. They are going by car which even with the high cost of fossil fuel, is still a lot cheaper than flying and renting a car there. I always wondered why they called the Maritimes ‘ down east’.
When you look at it on a big map Cape Breton is pretty much on the sale latitude as the southern tip of James Bay, which is quite a bit further ‘up north’ than ‘down east’.

SPUDITORIAL — LIFE’S A BITCH WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT.

It’s been one of those periods in my life when nothing seems to be going wrong. Usually it’s something…you know, like your car needs new brakes or your bike needs a new gear shift. Or your house is going to cost you a lot of money for, well pick a thing. Or your client is an idiot and is refusing to pay you. But right at the moment I have none of those tragedies to report on or bitch about. Everybody around me is happy and healthy. The weather is finally warming up. It’s all good. Even the morons who walk by my house seem a little less moronic these days. I guess you could call it spring fever, but I just can’t be bothered getting too upset about anything right now.

I suppose, if I wanted to, I could get upset about the Blue Jays’ lack of hitting. But, hey they’re just slumping…they’ll come out of it. In spite of the fact that I say this every year and every year they manage to miss the playoffs. I sometime feel like one of those Toronto Maple Leafs fans who swear up and down that every season is going to be the season their Leafs win the Stanley Cup. This in spite of the fact that they can’t even muster up enough of the necessary hutzpah to make a decent run at the last playoff spot. I should be ranting like crazy about loyalty that’s so wrongly misplaced. But hey, it’s a free country. Leaf fans are entitled to treat their team, flawed and incompetent as it might be, as the second coming. It’s been going on so long that it could hardly upset me, especially right now when there’s nothing to complain about.

I could get upset about Hillary Clinton, bound and determined to hang in the democratic nomination race till the last dog dies. But hey, that’s Hillary, trying to prove she got the same kind of kohones as Margaret Thatcher. But I have to admit that I saw her on TV yesterday giving a speech to a bunch of old farts in Florida and her absurd posturing made her look like one of those wrestling divas giving a pre-match speech in the middle of a white trash infested sport palace in butt-wipe Missouri. I mean she was flailing around, doing fist pumps and bragging about her health care plan, which she evidently believes is hers and hers alone. Man, she looked scary as all get out. But hey, I can’t complain about a proud middle aged American woman trying like hell to assert her individuality. Although I have to admit I did kind of lose it for her right then and there, not that I have a vote or anything. But I do believe how goes the USA, so, sorta kinda go we. So I pay attention. Besides, it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than any political race that’s ever been run in this country.

I could have gotten upset when I was sitting down in Spud Central and watching the debut of season 4 of Dancing With The Stars, you know, the one where they show all the colourful bozos who didn’t make the cut, and I’m thinking “Why the heck am I watching at all these chronically self-delusional morons who have obviously lined up for days, only to get on the audition stage and prove to however many million people watching, just what gargantuan assholes they are. These people are ego and vanity run completely amok. After the 4th or 5th one, I just couldn’t take it any more and went upstairs to Spud Central 2 and watched the Pistons/Celtics game. No assholes there, at either end of the court. But hey, I can hardly complain about it…it is, after all, the ultimate expression of democracy in action, because in America every single person, no matter what sex, race, height, weight or religion has the right to try and get on TV and make a complete doofus of him or herself. I guess the fact that so many of them do should bother me a bit, as it constitutes nothing more than a benign form of pollution and the time spent gazing at all this ludicrousness is time I will never, ever get back should bother me a bit. And maybe at some other time it would. But hey, I can’t complain.

DURHAM COUNTY (NO SPUD IN SIGHT)

I try to watch everything that’s new on Network TV and try to support Canadian TV production whenever it’s possible. But this series, the debut episode of which I watched, or tried to, the other night is just too stupid for words. I’m a murder and mayhem freak and there’s nothing I like more than a good serial killer drama. But this thing really frosted my socks.

Durham County is about a cop who relocates his family from Toronto to this suburban cemetery of a place where all the houses are grey, and the sun never seems to shine. He does this because his wife has breast cancer, which makes no sense, because if it was my wife, I’d really want to be close to the Princess Margaret Hospital. He then ends up moving into a house that’s a stone’s throw from some nasty high tension power lines, which delights his wife to no end. Then he finds that he has moved in across the street from some guy he went to high school with, who he accidently ran down with his car back in the day and dashed this guy’s hopes of becoming an NHL hockey player. The neighbour, played by Justin Louis, is so bitter and twisted about all this that he has become a serial killer, and a real stupid one at that. He spends more time walking around in blood stained clothing than any serial killer ever. Justin also has a kid who is a budding writer. But he won’t give the kid enough money to go to college and pursue his dream, because he had his dream dashed and nobody else is getting theirs. When the kid’s teacher, who is a big fan of the kid’s writing meets with Justin and tells him she will be willing to pay his expenses, Justin does what any asshole serial killer would do…he beats her to death. That’s about all I could take. If this all sounds as ludicrous to you as it does to me, you’re well advised to avoid this one like the plague. It’s not that the actors aren’t good. They are. We have a lot of good actors in this country and this show is filled with them. Its just that the bozo or bozos who concocted this idea may have had something that looked really interesting in script form, but turned into a complete farce when on the screen. Oh yeah, to top it all off, the cop’s Durham country partner is gay. Not that there would be anything wrong with that normally, but in this piece of trash, it just feels extra ludicrous. I’m constantly amazed that people in this country belly up big bucks for companies to produce D-level crud like this. And that networks like Global pick it up and run it. Did anybody actually watch this stuff? Well I did. And now you don’t have to. You can thank me later.

THE GREAT DEBATERS (2 SPUDS)

The struggle for equality in America between the black and white races has been providing an ongoing wealth of material both literary and filmic pretty much throughout the history of America. A lot of people have tackled this issue in a lot of different ways. This time it’s mega rich black chick, Oprah Winfrey teaming up with Denzel Washington to tell the story of the debating team from Wiley College in Marshall Texas and how they rose to national prominence despite all the obvious disadvantages of being a little black college in the middle of redneck nowhere.

But this isn’t simply the story of the debating team, as much as it is a story of a certain period in black history, towards the end of the end of The Great Depression. Denzel, in addition to being the professor who starts and nurtures the debating team is also an underground political activist, whom the redneck authorities ‘have their eye on’.

The Great Debaters is a really solid movie. With incredible performances right across the board, including Denzel Whitaker, whose real father Forest Whitaker, actually plays his father in the film. This is the perfect kind of movie for an actor’s director like Denzel Washington to direct. The young people in this movie, black and white alike, deliver authentic and passionate performances. This is a movie you can see a couple of times, because it’s so rich and the performances are all so magnetic. Not to mention, it’s a great diversion from the typical anti-terrorist and shoot’emups that seems to be flooding the market these days.

THE ADNROMEDA STRAIN (2 SPUDS)

This is one of the A&E produced movies which they run ten times a week to really get their money’s worth. It’s based on the old Michael Chrichton novel from way back in the day, the exact plot of which I can’t even remember. Maybe I’ll slide by a yard sale and pick up a 25¢ copy of the original book and see how badly this update has butchered it.

That’s unfair. The times have changed, as have the sci-fi gizmos that the handsome and beautiful scientists who are called in to figure out the mystery of the strange virus that came to earth stuck to a satellite, landing, of course, in the armpit of nowhere in Idaho, have to work with. How come these things never happen in like even a mid sized city?

Anyway Benjamin Bratt and Ricky Schroeder (who used to be Rick and was originally Ricky) lead an ethnically balanced pack of inquisitive scientists through a whole lot of mental acrobatics and scientific postulating and theorizing to determine the origin and, of course come up with a dandy weapon to fight the disease. On the other side we have Andre Braugher and the aforementioned Justin Louis, as a nasty General/Colonel duo who have hidden agendae. And on the third side we have Eric McCormick, as a stoned out reporter who is trying to bring the story to the world.

As a production, this movie kind of crackles along at a fairly breakneck pace. There’s lot of good killing, especially by the virus, some cheesy and some very good special effects, and a cast full of TV stars we all know and love. It’s the ideal made for TV mini series. Overall, I kind of liked it. There was a lot of really good tension and that’s sort of what you want with a flick like this. Now the ending is a little bit over the top, but at that point, I really didn’t care very much. I assumed that the human race was going to win…I mean don’t they always win?

This will be around for a while and will make for some interesting viewing for spuds who like their sci-fi a little on the bloody side.

Volume 327

DVDS
We Own The Night (1.5 Spuds)
Cloverfield (2 Spuds)
The Brave One (2 Spuds)
I’m Not There (No Spud 4U)

SPUDITORIAL
Google Hell…It’s Googlicious, Not

THE SPORT SPUD SPEAKS
Chris Paul- Is this dude for real?

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

SPUDITORIAL — GOOGLE HELL. IT’S JUST LIKE ORDINARY HELL…ONLY GOOGLIER

When I started this blog, I did it because I thought it would be more convenient for all the Spuds (like you) who read it and forward it to your buds. Well you must be doing a hell of a job of forwarding it because last week the Ivory Tower of Google, froze my blog stating:

“ This blog has been locked due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations. You may not publish new posts until your blog is reviewed and unlocked.” Eeek. It made me feel like such a criminal. Terms of Service violations and all. So I went and read the terms of service and that was a bust because there are no links on my blog and there is no pornography on my blog, although some people have accused me of being a slut sometimes. So I’m like, what’s up with this?

Anyway, you can request a review, which I did, and am still waiting for. But when you request a review, you this this message:

“ Blogger’s spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What’s a spam blog?) Since you’re an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive. You won’t be able to publish posts to your blog until one of our humans reviews it and verifies that it is not a spam blog. Please fill out the form below to get a review. We’ll take a look at your blog and unlock it in less than two business days.”

Well about 10 business days have passed and I am still locked up. This leads me to believe that there is a real shortage of humans at Google, but a real abundance of robots. Not to be deterred, I have since opened a new blog, which is in your email, and which you have obviously used if you are reading this.

I got a lot of response to my last mailing, with the temporary posting on The Sport Potato Chronicles. Evidently, this tactic practiced by Google and I assume all the other search engines who think that just because you have a mailing list that your send blog notifications out to, that you are a spammer. Well exxxxxxcccuuuuuuse me. If someone in the exhalted towers of Googledom would just bother to email with an email address that I could actually respond to, I would set them straight in a New York minute. But no, that would be too easy, and who knows actually communicating with the public may take away some of the mystique that keeps their stock price so high and we can’t have that. All this does is confirm my theory that the internet is run by a bunch of introverted geeks who would rather design a robot to shut your down than send you an email inititate a human dialogue.

All that crap not withstanding, I would just like to thank all you loyal Spuds out there for condemning me to a term in Google Hell, as it is known on the web. I don’t hold a grudge, because from my couch, Google Hell is an indicator of blogging success. So by all means, keep forwarding my new coordinates to everyone you know. You can still go to http://couch-potato-chronicles.blogspot.com and read back issues up to Volume 325.

For current issues I’ve switched over to another blog server called WordPress. My address there is http://jimmurray.wordpress.com/

POST SCRIPT:
I have decided, thanks in part to Spud Tony Bolla, (nabernet.com), to create a Couch Potato Chronicles web site, which will allow me to post whatever I want and not have to deal with the bullshit and lack of communication of the Search Engines. It may take a while, cause there’s a bit of a learning curve for me to be able to administer my own site, but what the hell. The light at the end of the tunnel is freedom, and because Tony runs a substantial network o sites already, more spuds. No downside that I can see.

THE BRAVE ONE (2 SPUDS)

This is a film by Brit Neil Jordan, which stars Jodie Foster (still a top babe) and Terrance Howard, the new hardest working black dude in Hollywood. Neil Jordan is well known for films that are dark and heavy, which happen to be the kind of films I like the best. (The Good Thief, Interview With The Vampire, The Crying Game, Mona Lisa, Michael Collins). And Jody Foster simply doesn’t ever get involved with bad movies. So I was right in Spud Heaven.

The Brave One tells the story of Jody, who has her own FM radio program about New York City. She goes around recording sounds and telling stories about New York. If it was a real show and I lived there I would listen to it. Anyway one night, she and her fiancé are out walking the dog in Central Park when they are viciously and sadistically attacked by a gang of assholes. Her boyfriend (Naveen Andrews from Lost) is killed and Jody is messed up pretty bad. The rest of the movie is all about what Jody turns into as a result of this extreme trauma. And that’s all I’m gonna say, other than that Terrance Howard plays a NYPD detective who takes an interest in her case.

This film, as I said is very dark, literally, as most of it is shot at night when Jody goes a prowling. But it is extremely well-constructed and everything that happens never seems rushed or forced. Its slow pace kind of defies the genre clichés. This movie is a real character study more than it is an action picture or a melodrama, And Jody and Terrance Howard are the perfect characters to study.

The Brave One is just plain excellent on every level that an intelligent movie goer would appreciate. You can’t go wrong with Jody. ( Inside Man, Flightplan, Panic Room, Anna & The King, Nell, Sommersby, Maverick, The Accused, Taxi Driver, Five Corners).

CLOVERFIELD (2 SPUDS)

JJ Abrams is the new Steve Spielberg. He’s full of great ideas and has the skill and the crew around him to make them work big time. He is one of those all round Hollywood geniuses who can write, produce , direct compose and run shows. (Felicity, Lost, Alias, What About Brian?). He has also directed a Mission Impossible and is currently directing the next Star Trek movie. So this guy is very big time and anything he is involved with is bound to be worth a boo.

Cloverfield is a film that he produced. It’s a sci fi movie about an alien invasion. It is shot entirely from the point of view of a video camera being held by one of the characters. It starts at a goodbye party for one of the guys in this cluster of 2o somethings living in Manhattan. The POV (point of view) camera technique is not something that every director can pull off, but in the hands of director Matt Reeves, it works like a charm. This movie has all the scariness of The Blair Witch Chronicles, but with characters, a landscape and an antagonist that are far more interesting. The Wife found it to be a little brutal for her sensibilities, so I was left to watch it on my own, which is not a bad thing to do when you’re watching what essentially amounts to a stylized horror flick. It was hardly a dark and stormy night, but I got a few jolts nonetheless.

Cloverfield, which is the army’s name for the assault program they mounted against the invaders, is pretty relentless, mainly because the characters are all running from a threat that they can’t really see, but one which pretty much trashes Manhattan with ease and doesn’t really appear to have any motive for doing so.

Anyway, I won’t tell you what happens, cause I never do. But this film is worth checking out, mainly because you get to marvel at how they managed to maintain this POV camera throughout the entire film and still have a high level of character development and plot progression. It’s scary good.

WE OWN THE NIGHT (1.5 SPUDS)

This is one of those “New York Cop” movies, written and directed by a dude names James Grey who also did The Yards and Little Odessa. It’s got the authentic New York look and feel. It’s got the now mandatory Russian mafia antagonists and it’s got the family cop dynasty with Robert Duvall as the dad, Markie Mark Whalberg and Joaquin Phoenix as the good and bad (who turns good) sons respectively.

I found this movie to be quite watchable, mainly because of the actors. It’s pretty heavy and dark, but that’s not really a bad thing. The production values left a little to be desired, which is to say for a New York movie it was no Spike Lee Joint.

The plot, which is pretty standard, has to do with the Russian mob importing narcotics in the kind of clever way that only the Ruskies would think of. Markie Mark has just been promoted to the head of the Narc Squad and his brother Joaquin (looking very much like a young Marlon Brando), is the manager of the club where the aforementioned Ruskies hang out at night. And so it goes. Nothing really spectacular, just a good solid workman like movie effort.

I’M NOT THERE (AN ARTSY FARTSY INVASION OF BOB DYLAN’S PRIVACY) (NO SPUD 4U)

I don’t have any real ‘idols’. That’s mainly because I happen to think that idolatry is silly. But there are a number of people whom I respect immensely. Bob Dylan is at the very top of that list. I have listened to and been influenced by his writing and his music for more than 4o years. He truly is one of a kind in the literary and music worlds. And a big part of what has made Bob Dylan so special is that he always adamantly refused to be stereotyped, categorized, pigeon-holed or otherwise specifically defined. So whenever anybody who isn’t Bob Dylan tries to do anything that has to do with Bob Dylan, they are trespassing on sacred ground, and should be taken out and shot.

In spite of this strong opinion, I was nevertheless tempted to see what writer/director Todd Haynes was up to with I’m Not There, a film, which allegedly allegorizes the many facets of Bob Dylan.

First and foremost, I have to report that Mr Haynes has done nothing to either deepen my insight into or alter my appreciation for Bob Dylan. What he has done is prove to the world that he can be as pretentious an asshole as anyone out there, even the guy who used to go through Bob Dylan’s garbage to see what he could find out about him. I don’t know what it is about the supremely gifted that makes everyone want to dissect them and look around inside them. Maybe they are hoping that some of the juice that makes guys like Bob Dylan run will somehow rub off on them and make them supremely gifted too.

But it never happens. And it doesn’t happen with this movie, which attempts to shed some light on the complexities of being Bob, but only succeeds in being a boring mess of mixed metaphors and overwrought allegory. It does succeed in proving one thing however and that is that no matter how smart you think you are, full blown three dimensional phenoms will always elude any attempts to capture and package them up for mass consumption.

I hated this movie for one simple reason. The only thing that Bob Dylan ever asked from anyone was just to listen to the songs. He didn’t want them turned into hymns or anthems or rallying cries for the liberal left. He just wanted the songs to be listened to any enjoyed.

A lot of people brought a lot of their talent to bear on this movie and it really pisses me off that they wasted their time so. That they got so caught up in trying to explain an enigma, a task that has always been doomed to fail. All that happened here was caricature, and for a true fan of Bob Dylan’s it was painful to watch. I understand that the filmmaker was trying to explain Bob Dylan to the world. But all the way through this interminable meandering bullshit all I kept asking myself was why. Why did I need to understand any more about Bob Dylan than I already do? Why do I need to understand anything about him at all? I mean. I have all of his music, know the lyrics to almost all of his songs, have read almost every article ever written about him and every interview with him, have seen the movies he has made. Read the first volume of his memoirs. Hell, I even got to spend some time with him back in the day.

That fact that he was enigmatic and obtuse as a person only said to me that he doesn’t really care if you know him that intimately. In fact, this persona is probably designed to give him something most of us take for granted, our privacy.

This movie is an artsy fartsy invasion of Bob Dylan’s privacy. Leave Bob alone, you assholes. Just listen to the songs like everybody else and mind your own business.

THE SPORT SPUD SPEAKETH
CHRIS PAUL—IS THIS DUE FOR REAL?

One of the things I like most about the NBA is that every so often a convergence of the right players, great coaching and several other elements all collide to create a team that ends up having themselves a hell of a season. Such was the case with the formerly hapless New Orleans Hornets. They used to be the Charlotte Hornets, but moved to New Orleans a few years before Katrina. Since that time they have been quietly putting the pieces of a true championship team together. But they have been keeping such a low profile that you kind of had to squint a bit to see what’s been going on.

But this year, they have busted out and are in full view, sealing their division early, then wiping the floor with the now hapless Dallas Mavericks and currently taking it strongly to the defending champ San Antonio Spurs. And I have to tell you that the only thing I like more than seeing the Spurs have their asses handed to them, (in back to back blowouts) is having their asses handed to them by a team that they never would have expected to be up for the job.

The principal spark plug for the Hornets great season is their point guard Chris Paul. I have watched every game this kid (only 2 years in) has played so far in the playoffs , and he is simply amazing. While he is very much his own dog, you can see shades of just about every great point guard who ever played the game. He has the court vision of Magic Johnson, the speed and agility of The Sun’s Kevin Johnson, the cunning and tenacity of Isiah Thomas and Nate Archibald, the passing ability and floor generalship of the Jazz’ John Stockton, the durability and scoring sense of Allen Iverson and the same level of ability to make his teammates better as Steve Nash. I can honestly say that I have never seen anyone quite like him. For a relative youngster in the league he plays the game like he’s been at it for 10 plus years. His confidence with the ball is astonishing. And his ability to thread the needle and run the gamut of big men surrounding him is simply awesome to behold.

I didn’t have a chance to see the Hornets play much during the regular season, but watching them in the playoffs has been a real treat. They are one of the most cohesive teams in the league. They have excellent inside and outside shooting and they are capable of mustering a smothering defense against the likes of Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobli. In short, they have everything they need to get to the finals.

When they do, and I hope they do, they will likely be up against the Lakers. This will be one of the best series ever in a playoff and will for me at least define the playoffs and make the final championship round against whoever comes out of the east, even the mighty Celtics, almost an afterthought. Hopefully not…but that’s my hunch.

In the meantime, I’m glued to the Hornets and Chris Paul, because watching him is like watching a splendid chapter of basketball history being written right before your eyes.

Volume 326

DVDS/Movies
Juno (2 Spuds)
Charlie Wilson’s War (2 XL Spuds)

ON THE TUBE
SPUDITORIAL
Hats Off To The US Cable Networks

THE SPORT SPUD SPEAKETH
NBA Playoffs or Spud Heaven

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

Well, here we are with the typical spring weather. Sweating your ‘you know whats’ off one day freezing them the next. Today is somewhere in the middle and on the way back up again.

The Wife’s lungs got a clean bill of health yesterday from Earl The Pearl, and she also started a (hopefully) new job, taking care of her very own alternative school. It’s called SOLE and its right upstairs from where she used to work. She’s a little overwhelmed by it all this week, so we’re going out of our way not to give her a hard time about, well anything. Evidently this exposes here to a whole bunch of new stuff that she hasn’t done before, and so she’s going at it with all her usual gusto and I have no doubt she will get it all into a stepover double toe hold over the next while and be just fine.

We haven’t been watching a lot of movies lately, being as a lot of our favourite shows like NCIS and Boston Legal, House, Shark, Numbers, Big Bang Theory etc have recuperated from the writer’s strike and are back with a vengeance. But a couple of shows are worth sending out kudos to. The first is The Border, which is a CBC production and one of the highest energy level shows on TV. They just wrapped up their first season and the shows were excellent.The second is Eli Stone, a kind of fanciful new drama from Everwood and What About Brian Creator, Greg Berlanti. This show stars Johnnie Lee Miller (a Scot), as a hard pushing American lawyer who starts having visions that change his life. At first they are thought to have been the result from blood clot in his brain, but we won’t know for sure until next season. Writing on this level is rare on network TV, so you should really make it a point to catch both of these shows when they come around again.

Another neat show, that’s still going on is Samatha Who, an audience-free comedy starring
ace TV babe Christina Applegate. She plays this girl named Samatha who used to be a real bitch queen before he got bonked on the head and can’t remember her past life. This show is witty and funny and of course full of Christina who is both fun to watch and pleasant to look at.

JUNO (2 SPUDS)

From a production values point of view, this movie isn’t really even a notch above a made for TV movie of the week. But that doesn’t really matter, because Juno is really all about its very clever script and the wonderful acting performances right across the board.

This is the story of a 16 year old girl named Juno MacGuff, played by 21 year old Ellen Page (a Canuk), who finds herself knocked up by her high school sweetheart, Paulie. It’s a pretty serious theme out of which to construct a wonderful comedy, but that’s just what happens here. A wonderful comedy. And it’s wonderful because everything that happens here all feels very much like something that could happen in your own life. In fact, this isn’t really so much a comedy as it is a kind of ode to the teenage years.

The Juno character really is pretty much an ‘every girl’. She’s smart and popular in a female anti-hero sort of way. She’s lives in a working class community. She’s got a step mom instead of a real mom. Her best friend is a deb. Her boyfriend is a quiet nerd. Her dad is into air conditioning repair and her little half sister is a ballerina. This is all perfectly normal.

Anyway, the story is about Juno trying to find some adoptive parents for her baby, because she’s too smart to want to ruin her life by keeping it.

That’s about all I can tell you other than that it moves along rather nicely, makes you feel good, never really flags at all and at the end you just kind of nod and say to yourself, ‘Hey, that was alright.”

Ellen Page got an Academy award nomination for her acting and writer Diablo Cody won an Oscar for the screenplay. So you really kind of owe it to yourself to see this film. The bonus is that you’ll probably thank me for recommending it, cause it’s really a lot of fun.

CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR (2 XL SPUDS)

Sometimes the planets align absolutely perfectly and wonderful things happen. In this case it’s a true story of the fall of communism and the end of the Cold War, as adapted by genius Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing), as directed by Mike Nichols, also no slouch in the brains department, as acted by Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julia Roberts and a whole bevy of supporting players and as watched, laughing pretty much all the way, by me and the Wife. Admittedly, the Wife thought it was delightful. But I thought it was pretty hilarious.

This is the story of a badass 5 term serving congressman (Hanks) who gets goaded into ending the cold war by pushing for the multi-millions needed for the Afghan people to run the invading Russian army out of their “pile of rocks” country. The story is told with a lot of good humour, world class acting and directing and a pacing that always keeps you right there with it, even though you know how it turns out.

This is a truly great film because everything here is firing on all cylinders. And everybody really knows what they are doing. I don’t need to get into a whole lot of detail about it. Just go get it. This is a Must See Moo Vee.

SPUDITORIAL — HATS OFF TO US CABLE TVNETWORKS

Now I don’t really have much of a problem with network TV. I mean, they’ve been trying their asses off and they have, in a number of instances succeeded. With Boston Legal, NCIS, Lost, Numbers, House, Eli Stone, Canterbury’s Law, and even Desperate Housewives if you’re into that sort of thing. But when it comes to producing really high calibre drama for television, The US cable networks like FX Networks Showtime, USA and of course HBO have really raised the bar.

Most recently I’ve become addicted to the latest FX Networks series called Damages. This is a series about all the dirty rotten lowdown stuff that happens when there’s a couple billion dollars on the line in a class action lawsuit. It’s absolutely the most compellingly watchable TV series I have seen yet. Mainly because the storytelling that’s going on here is so clever, and secondarily, because all the stuff it takes to really bring a great story to life is there in spades. Perfect casting. Great characters, each and everyone of which has a hidden agenda. Complete ruthlessness…there’s nothing politically correct or dumbed down going on here. Your have to be awake and smart to follow and enjoy this show. It’s definitely not for the trailer trash Jerry Springer-Maury Pauvich crowd.

And that’s the real point here. Television is so popular, that it’s now possible for intelligent people to be able to enjoy TV as frequently as they like without having their intelligence slapped around by prime time soap operas, with plastic characters and stupid story lines. This, and the availability of just about every important sporting event (for certain people like me) are the two main advantages of the billion channel universe.

I remember reading something a while back about the guy who produced one of the early cable network series, like Eureka or one of those, I can’t remember now. He was saying that he pitched his show to all four of the networks and they all thought he was nutso, and didn’t want to have anything to do with him. So he crossed over to the cable network side and almost immediately got a bidding war going for his show. And therein lies the difference.

Not only to the cable networks have the ability to recognize great ideas when they see them, they also have the balls and the baggage-free infrastructures to green light a lot of them.

Used to be when you developed an idea for television, it’s was only natural to want to take it to the biggest networks you could find. Unfortunately these days, the bigger the network, the bigger the pickle that resides up their asses. They have too much too worry about…too many uptight advertisers who still believe that their brands should be associated with most of the dreck that passes for programming these days.

So now, if you have a really great idea for a TV series, the major networks are really the last place you want to take it, because if it’s really brilliant, not some formula crap shined up to fascinate the pea-brained TV viewers out there, it won’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting made. But…the times, they are a changin’. Now there are a whole plethora of places you can take your amazing idea, get an audience of open minds and maybe even score yourself a fairly sweet deal. And thank Krom for that. Because without these alternative networks, shows like The Sopranos, Dead Like Me, Entourage, Nip Tuck, Carnivale, Deadwood, Damages, The Shield, Rescue Me, The Wire, Sex In The City, Rome, Six Feet Under, Dexter, The Tudors, John From Cincinatti, Weeds & Californication, would be nowhere to be seen.

I don’t know about you, but that is one hell of a lot of enjoyment that I am glad I don’t have to do without.

Someday, I hope, the big networks will pry their heads out of their asses and really start to acknowledge that there’s room in their precious schedules for something more entertaining than Big Brother, The Bachelor, Survivor-Butthole Indonesia, Are You Smater Than A Fifth Grader, Moment of Truth and all of the other low rent crap they have been foisting on the people to do their part to support the Republican “Keep ‘em Dumb… Keep’em Scared” cultural agenda. Hopefully that will all change when the Democrats take over for their eight years.

Anyway. If you haven’t seen Damages. You can get it on DVD in some, but not all video stores. And you should do it, because this is what TV viewing should really be all about.

THE SPORTS SPUD SPEAKETH—NBA PLAYOFFS OR SPUD HEAVEN

The NBA playoffs, which are truly a season unto themselves, are off with a bang and a whimper at the same time. I had high hopes for the excitement level of the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets. But it turns out that the Lakers’ smothering offence and the MVP heroics of Kobe Bryant were just to much for the offence-heavy/defense-lacking Nuggets. Through it all, however, it should be noted that Alan Iverson, the Nuggets’ point guard is still one of the favourite all time players, right up there with Jordan, Bird, Kareem Magic, Kevin Garnett and Shaq in his younger days.

The Raptors went down to the Orlando Magic in five games. Again, lack of defense against the Magic’s big man Dwight Howard. The Detroit Pistons and the Philly 76’rs keep duking it out back and forth, which is something I never saw coming, just as I never saw the lowly Atlanta Hawks taking two out of four so far from the sixty something win Celtics. (Just forced a game 7 last night and what a great game it was.)

But the biggest delight so far for me is the New Orleans Hornets stomping all over the mighty Dallas Mavericks. The Mavs, who spent big buckaroos on All Star point guard Jason Kidd, pretty much have a lot of egg on their faces, as they have been absolutely helpless against the Hornets amazing point guard Chris Paul, and vet David West. In point of fact, the whole Hornets teams has stepped up big time and will hopefully be able to close out the hapless Mavs tonight, (PS They did) and finally shut up their mouthy owner, Mark Cuban. The Dallas fans have to be really upset with the trade for J. Kidd. I’m not sure what Cuban was thinking. Kidd seems to be coasting on his reputation alone right now, in his mid thirties and looking haggard and worn from years of playing in the swamplands of Jersey and an ongoing marriage/divorce nightmare. It’s not all rosy for guys making 12 or 14 million a year and it sometimes shows on the floor. Dallas is all over the place, whereas New Orleans is completely focused and doing what they have to do. I am really looking forward to seeing New Orleans and the Lakers in the final, although New Orleans will have to get by the San Antonio Spurs to make that happen, and that may not be possible.

Also, my best wishes go out to lifelong Utah Jazz fans, including original Spud Cam Levack whose unflagging loyalty to the Jazz is admirable. They beat the Rockets to advance in their playoff run. Which is good. But starting Sunday, they have to face the Lakers which is not so good.

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