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Movie Review — Shutter Island (2010), a Psychological Thriller Masterpiece

Gary Karbon — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:05:10 +0000

By Gary Karbon

July 6, 2010

A masterpiece by Martin Scorsese on the level of Taxi Driver and Goodfellas.

The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio in his usual pedal-to-the-metal best) heads for the psychiatric-jail on Shutter Island to investigate the case of a missing patient/criminal, Rachel Solando. Accompanying him is his junior partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo).

The mental hospital, which is actually a maximum-security jail protected by an army of smug and hard-core guards, is led by Dr. John Cawley, the head psychiatrist — acted with great control and restraint by Ben Kingsley.

Daniels has some baggage: he was one of the American servicemen who entered the Dachau extermination camp during the liberation of Germany. The things that he saw and did at Dachau left their indelible marks on him.

Then there’s the memory of his lovely wife Dolores Chanal (played by lovely Michelle Williams of Brokeback Mountain who never disappoints)… Memory of a fire that destroyed a family…

This is a film about the tenuous nature of personal identity and the amazing powers of the mind to create alternative realities, each as real as the other one. Or as Bill Clinton once said: it all depends on what the definition of “is” is.

What starts out as a straight-forward missing-person investigation by two G-suits slowly changes shape and turns into a man’s desperate struggle to maintain his own sanity, while trying to assess the sanity of all those around him. What a screenplay! Kudos for the writer Laeta Kalogridis who adopted Dennis Lehane’s novel of the same name.

Scorsese, who at this point in his career have of course mastered the visual language of motion pictures, opens up the first scene with a statement as bold as the first sequence of the Jaws, and the tension never lets up, partly thanks to the arresting musical score.

Jackie Earl Haley, one of those most-under-acknowledged but great actors like Barry Pepper (61*) and Marcia Gay Harden (Pollock), again treats us to a great psychological feast, bringing to life a demented patient.

While we are talking about supporting roles, I must also mention John Carroll Lynch. If you thought playing the softie honey-of-a-husband in Fargo was the best he could do, think again. See how he breathes menacing life into Deputy Warden McPherson. The man has a range, clearly.

The resolution of the film does not turn out to be what we secretly hope it’d be. There’s a certain sense of letdown at the concluding last scene, perhaps because the lead role belongs to a good-looking baby-face guy like DiCaprio who always plays the “hero.” So perhaps that’s a casting issue that we have to deal with as audience.

Yet, deep down below, we also know that that’s exactly how it’d turn out in real life. And that explains why the hair on our necks rise when the final shock is delivered without flinching. Scorsese does not pull any punches there.

A dark downer painted in bruising black, lightning blue and thunder gray. Not a movie to watch on a sunny Saturday surrounded by your kids, family, and fresh pop-corn. But if you like psychological thrillers, this is a new American Classic that will stand the test of time like Cape Fear. Recommended.

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Movie Review — Intermission (2003), a “romantic thriller” that parodies itself

Gary Karbon — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:46:27 +0000

By Gary Karbon

June 29, 2010

Intermission, director John Crowley’s first film, is supposed to be a film about “life is what happens in between” two major events; that is, an intermission. But the ending proves the reverse – that, no matter what happens during the intermission, the RESUMPTION of the pre-intermission process towards the MEANINGFUL CULMINATION of one’s life scenario is what counts. That’s why this successful romantic-thriller (a rarity in itself) ends up becoming its own parody. A good film with the wrong log line.

The setting is Dublin, a city of misfits with heavy accents, egomaniac police detectives and supermarket bosses, spurned lovers, middle-aged cheaters with the gray-itch, small-time crooks, simple hearts yearning for undying love … in short, a city like many others around the world.

This is the story of John (Cillian Murphy) and his girlfriend Deirdre (Kelly Macdonald) who takes up with a middle-aged bank manager who leaves his wife for Deidre’s much younger offerings. Then there’s Lehiff (Colin Farrell), good for nothing bum who is chased and humiliated by the sadist gas-bag cop Jerry (Colm Meaney) whose main mission in life is to become a TV celebrity starring in his own cop reality show.

When John agrees to be part of a heist plot to win back Deirdre, the story engine shifts into high gear. After some obligatory twists and turns the story reaches its nerve-soothing climax that again revolves around our two main characters: John and Deirdre.

Colin Farrell and Colm Meaney are so good as villains one wonders if they are actually acting or not.

The bottom line is this: are you ready to affirm your love upfront and confirm the responsibility of that decision, or will you continue to dance around waiting to be “discovered” as a lover? That’s the main question asked in Intermission, a question that’s answered well, in nuanced strokes.

There’s one late scene between the two lovers, talking straight from the heart for the first time with zero BS, that almost brought tears to my eyes. That’s the kind of “thriller” this is. It’s a man’s action thriller that crosses the finish line as a chick-flick. That’s a hard balance to toe. Recommended.

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“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”: a Postmodern Coming of Age

Ersin Akinci — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:19:07 +0000

By Ersin Akinci

June 23, 2010

It’s common enough now to see so many postmodern motifs in the post-WWII European art scene that the two have become inseparable. While the Second World War’s aftermath ushered in a triumphant and strident national narrative for the U.S. that lived on despite the turbulence of the 60′s and 70′s, French and German artists turned inward to confront deep feelings of guilt and shame–not that the Americans were immune to their own need for soul searching. Yet whereas the vibrant modernist abstract expressionism of Pollock, Rothko, and Rauschenberg sought to establish a new inner reality, these developments stateside were mirrored by the bleak existentialism of Giacometti and the low art of Dubuffet immediately after the war. Even today, the dialectic between postmodern and post-war expresses itself brilliantly, cynically, and unfortunately through the snide, self-consciously pseudo-deconstructing work of the YBA’s.

It was with great surprise, then, that I finished watching the positive ending of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, a recent Swedish release by director Niels Arden Oplev redolent with one of the greatest postmodern/post-WWII obsessions of all: the quest to forget our own history. In the film, Mikael Blomkvist, a muckraking Swedish journalist framed and convicted for libel, agrees to help Henrik Vanger, a kindly old man and the retired head of the powerful Vanger business conglomerate, to solve the 40-year old disappearance of his great-niece. Meanwhile, Lisbeth Salander, a mentally unbalanced and fiercely talented young hacker-for-hire, joins forces with Blomkvist after hacking his computer and gaining an interest in cracking his case.

What follows is, true to Scandinavian style and the epynonymous book’s original Swedish title (“Män som hatar kvinnor” – “Men Who Hate Women”), a gripping detective story mixed with harrowing moments of extreme sexual violence. As the film explores the backgrounds of each character, rape not only becomes an active agent but also gets bound up with history and the state. Salander fights to escape her sadistic treatment at the hands of her abusive government-assigned case worker, against whom she has no recourse but to rape in turn. Yet we learn that Salander’s own mother was abused by her husband with the implication that Salander had burned her father to death. We further discover that Vanger’s great-niece wasn’t killed, but rather she had run away to escape her father’s and her uncle’s constant sexual abuse. Finally, as Blomkvist’s investigation delves into the Vanger family’s past, Henrik Vanger’s neo-Nazi brothers reveal their sadistic pleasure in murdering Jewish women as a sexual thrill, drawing close parallels with the perverse erotic power dynamic so often found between Nazis and their “Jewess” prisoners. Such a dynamic accordingly reflects and faithfully exposes the tensions between Western Europe’s wartime crimes and its uneasy claim to reform and penance.

The goal of exposing postwar tensions in the European psyche through the deconstruction of history is old hat and ingrained in all upstanding and properly liberal Western Europeans. What is new, however, is how triumphantly “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” adopts and parades the result, which is not the usual bleak emptiness or ambivalent-at-best withdrawal from history, but rather an emphatic rejection of it altogether. Through the investigation, Blomkvist and Salander develop a sexual relationship that the former tries to turn into a romantic one, but Salander, incapable of romantic relations with another man, fights her feelings, escapes to the Cayman Islands, and becomes rich without any emotional repercussions (indeed, the movie ends on this high note). Blomkvist himself clearly turns his back on his romantic history with a colleague from his magazine, forgoing the older woman for the younger yet perhaps equally storied Salander, and finds one of the film’s rare notes of tranquility and self-recognition in her boyish bosom. Naturally, Salander’s rape of her case worker is a vicarious victory over her abused childhood while the death of Henrik Vanger’s evil brother is the epitome of fallen history. Yet even in two of the film’s reunions, between Vanger and his great-niece and Salander and her estranged mother, history is eschewed again: Vanger accepts his relative, who has grown up through womanhood far away in Australia, unconditionally on her own terms and not those of their family’s terrible past, whereas Salander essentially abandons her irreparably broken mother, who could not overcome her victimhood. In each case, history is dispatched with equal vigor.

The net balance is not a deconstructed pile of rubble, but a positive (in the existential and emotional senses) result that offers a legitimate way forward, which prompts the question: has postmodernism come into its own? Contrast The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, another recent film that explores historical reversal through a band of Jewish-American soldiers and their slaughterhouse revenge on their Nazi tormentors. Despite clear similarities, Tarantino’s film is ultimately fantasy and lacks metaphysics: it is a brave, brutal, and immediate vindication of Jews who were robbed of a fair chance at dignity as interpreted through the historical principle of the equality of violence, as opposed to the quiet, stolid dignity common in Holocaust films and literature. Oplev’s film, on the other hand, is about the way forward, closer in tone to the (dare I say it) wisdom of Southern Gothic literature. I could not help but think of Richard Ford’s wonderful line from The Sportswriter: “All we really want is to get to the point where the past can explain nothing about us and we can get on with life. Whose history can ever reveal very much?”

Perhaps one insoluble contradiction remains that neither Ford nor Oplev can fully answer, since while directors and authors can cut a scene they cannot cut our lives short: how can we escape history without it? Europe would do well to consider this question as it moves forward, especially now as Germany’s “commitment to Europe”, whose presence in the guilt-ridden stage play of postwar European culture is critical, has begun to shift under the burden of the Greek fiscal crisis. The ruling CDU party’s loss in the bellwether state of North Rhine-Westphalia this past May was largely seen as not only a referendum on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s economic policies, which have favored an unpopular EU-sponsored (read: German-bankrolled) bail out of Greece, but also on Germany’s sense of superior obligation and duty to European democratic unity and to amend her historic injustices. If the tide is shifting and Western European states do begin to feel like they have paid their dues, then they will implicitly acknowledge at least the principle of history. After Salander walks off into the brilliant Caribbean sunshine, what happens next? Will Sweden, Germany, and the rest of the world follow suit, will we remain in our broken state–or, perhaps, will we commit to our history knowing full well that it can’t be fixed and that we, like the sons of Adam, will have to bear our fallen state forever? That may indeed be the true lesson of postmodern history.

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McKee and Story as a “Material Force”

Gary Karbon — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:00:03 +0000

By Gary Karbon

June 23, 2010

You can think of a “story” as a unit of entertainment, which would not be wrong. But a story is a lot more than that. If you ask me, it’s what’s holding together our fragile sense of identity and our definition of what the world is all about.

“Then why do we live in such a fragmented world?” you may ask. My short answer would be: “Because we are living in a world where numerous stories compete for dominance.”

I recently watched the video of an ex-jihadist Pakistani intellectual who has devoted his life to debunk the “narrative” that is responsible for transforming Muslim youngsters into suicide bombers. “There’s a story circulating out there which tells these youngsters that the United States is waging a war to kill Muslims and erase Islam from the face of the earth, and unless you challenge and change that story the conflict will never end,” is the summary of his argument. Correct. That’s when you realize the kind of “material force” story is and has become, more than ever. It’s the relentless firmware that runs the hardware of the world 24-7.

McKee needs no introduction to those who have any involvement with screenwriting of course. But what’s special about this video is the way he explains how story can be (and is) used in the business world.

PERSUASION is the first order of business in the world of commerce and trade, McKee asserts. And there are 3 ways to persuade others: 1) Through RHETORIC (the PowerPoint presentation approach), 2) COERCION (my-way-or-highway approach), and 3) STORY TELLING – by far the most effective of the three. All great leaders in business and politics are at the same great story tellers. Lee Iaccoca, Winston Churchill, LBJ immediately comes to mind, for all the right seasons. But all story tellers in history were not good guys. Hitler was also a superb story teller if you ask me. The story he told over and over led tens of millions of people to their horrible deaths of course but that does not diminish the fact that he was a very effective story teller indeed.

Despite its power, story telling has a big handicap too – it needs talent (duh!) and that’s why most business types prefer a PowerPoint approach. BONUS: Watch the video (54 min. till the end) to understand why people fall asleep in the middle of 9 out of every 10 PP presentations made.

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I Could Care Less about the New Twilight Movie: New Moon

Daniel Dessinger — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:11:45 +0000

By Daniel Dessinger

November 25, 2009

I’ve been reading a lot of chatter on Twitter over the past month about the 2nd Twilight movie: New Moon. Here’s where I get real. Confession: I went to see the first Twilight movie with my wife at the theater. Having admitted that, I am compelled to also inform you that I was less than thrilled.

It’s not really fair, I think. We’ve become inundated with vampiric content over the past two years. The CB has a vampire show. HBO or Showtime has a popular vampire show. And Twilight is selling books like Harry Potter (well, almost). So part of my disdain for the arrival of New Moon stems from my irritation with all the other vampire content out there.

Truthfully, I’m not into vampires anymore. I loved the Anne Rice novels in the ’90s. I loved them too much. There is a fantasy and a romanticism temptation that comes along with these stories. Immortality, walking the night, murder for food, romancing the living: all these are intriguing concepts that lure people in.

But these stories don’t bring life. The real danger here is how they might affect the minds and thoughts of our teenagers. Speaking from experience, I was lost in a sea of fantasy as a teenager that I allowed to keep me from living in, understanding, and maturing in the real world. That is not Anne Rice’s fault – at least, not the majority. But the lure and hook are what hold us in complacency and self-pleasuring imagination.

Having said that, I may or may not see New Moon. I can’t really say yet. It’s not a priority, to be sure. The quality of acting and cinematography was good enough that I can respect the talent that went into production of the first film. But it should take more than talent to draw me to the theater. Content and message are more important.

Will you go see New Moon? Why or why not?

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Another Reason to Skip the Movie Theater

Lisa Pawlowski — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:30:40 +0000

By Lisa Pawlowski

March 25, 2009

Over the weekend, my family and I wanted to do something together that didn’t require a lot of money. We went to the “cheap” theatre in town and saw Valkyrie. I enjoyed the movie a lot and would have probably enjoyed it even more if I had waited until it came out on demand video so I could watch it at home.

It seems like every time I go to the movies, I always leave there asking myself if people are rude, stupid or a combination of both.

The problem I had watching the movie was with cell phones and with someone who didn’t bother to hire a babysitter and didn’t know when to leave when their child started crying. I mean, before the movie even starts there are reminders to “Be considerate of others. Turn off your cell phone. Don’t call or text during the movie.” You’d think that would be pretty self-explanatory. Yet during the movie, two cell phones went off.

While we were waiting for the picture to start, a couple brought in their child who looked to be about 1-year-old. They gave him keys to keep himself entertained which, of course, made loud jangly noises. When the movie still had about a third of the way to go, the child started crying. And he cried and he cried and he cried. Finally, the mother took him out. Then she came back in after the child had calmed down and then he started crying again.

Don’t these parents know that it is unreasonable to expect a child under four or five to stay quiet for that long? It’s torture for the child, the parents and everyone in the theatre.

When I go to a see a children’s movie, I expect a lot of noise and distraction. I don’t get upset with the kids because the movie is aimed at them and they are just doing what kids do. However, I do get disgusted at some parents because I have seen adults at kid’s movies behave rudely and carry on a conversation on a cell phone and text through half the show.

Many theatre patrons seem to think they are watching a movie in their living rooms and can make as much noise as they want and disturb as many people as they want. Their sense of entitlement knows no bounds as they say, “I paid for my ticket, I should be able to do whatever I want.” And that’s the problem. A ticket guarantees your right to see the movie, but it doesn’t mean you should be able to do as you please, particularly when that means disrupting the movie for others.

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Sprawling from Grace: Driven to Madness

Daniel Dessinger — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:45:54 +0000

By Daniel Dessinger

November 11, 2008

The Fallacy: Advances in technology will empower Americans to continue living life the way they have always lived, and it will do so by providing alternative energy sources to power their cars, trucks, and SUVs… and that everything will be fine.

“For as long as most Americans can remember, the car has been the icon of the American dream. It stirred our emotions and embodied our notions of freedom, wealth, and independence. At the same time, it reinforced our vision of a bright and shining future.”

That bright and shining future was an illusion. Fueled by the prowess of modern marketing and made possible by the frenzied shortsightedness of a post World War II generation, American citizens saw only the possibilities of a better life, with no consideration of the obvious future ramifications.

Former President Bill Clinton and former Governor Michael Dukakis are among the two dozen leaders warning of the dangers of the status quo of American city planning and transportation. These thought leaders urge Americans to refocus their energies on the wise creation of centralized livable communities. Sprawling from Grace: Driven to Madness, a film by David M. Edwards, addresses their concerns.

Population growth is a key factor. However, the greatest contributor to increased automobile use is our suburban pattern of city planning. This forces us into choices that more and more place us behind the wheels of our automobiles.

Shuttling kids to soccer practice, shopping, running errands, church activities, and social visits account for 80% of our automobile use. Due to a lack of foresight and strategic city planning, we’ve spread ourselves out so far across the land that simple errands and lifestyle activities require us to consume copious amounts of fuel and time, resulting in unprecedented pollution of our air, soil, and water and the separation of the individual from his or her immediate community.

16 million lane miles of aging road lanes. It would take $2 trillion to repair and update this sprawling infrastructure that continues to deliver diminishing returns.

What you’ve got, with the suburban living arrangement and all of its accessories can be described as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world… It is a living arrangement that doesn’t have a future… And we are going to continue behaving that way until we get some shock to the system that prompts us to behave differently.

The Crisis: Depleting oil resources. Pollution explosion. Time wasted and misallocated for transportation. Community erosion due to the lack of “placeness.”

It’s a sobering view of American infrastructure, but one which we can no longer afford to ignore. Sprawling from Grace leads our thought processes along the path of peak oil, sprawling suburbia, dependence upon the automobile and expensive highways, diminishing rate of oil recovery and delivery, and the call to rapidly change the way we view life in America.

The problem at this exact point in history, Sprawling says, isn’t running out of oil. The problem is that Americans are not prepared for the rising costs of oil on the way. And beyond financial, we have not taken seriously enough the moral implications of abusing energy resources. But at some point, it will not be economical to spend the time and money to recover it from the earth. Demand will continue to increase globally, and the easiest oil to produce has already been used.

A significant number of petroleum geologists believe that in this decade, and perhaps already, we have reached global peak oil production, something that happened in 1970 in America, where half of all the oil that we can get out of the ground has been taken out, most of it in the last 60 years. If that is true, given the rise of India and China and others coming along behind, we could be out of recoverable oil in somewhere between 35 and 50 years if present consumption patterns continue.

- President Bill Clinton

Sprawling from Grace sounds the call to change. Our civilization was built around the concept of $30 oil. Our land use and automobile dependency was not structured to withstand $80 or $130 oil. But rather than obsessing about a universal upgrade to hybrid automobiles that only provide 5-10 more miles per gallon per vehicle, Sprawling from Grace urges a massive and immediate reconsideration of land use nationwide.

We have ignored humanity in the building of our places and our public spaces for the last 40 years.

Sprawling’s position is not all about painful sacrifice. There is a restoration to a quality of life that can develop as a community centralizes its markets, cafes, parks, and public transportation, adding the aforementioned sense of “placeness.” This placeness can already be seen in the downtown areas of Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, and New York City. These cities are bastions of culture, art, architecture, music, and community life. It is this very richness of culture and heritage which America so desperately needs to develop throughout every one of it’s urban areas and communities.

The benefits of such a community are discussed toward the end of Sprawling from Grace. Such multi-generational communities care for the elderly, educate and nurture the youth, and establish a strong sense of a unique place, marked more by community creativity than imperial megastore dominance.

Will America listen? That is the question of the ages. Everyone should see this film. Whether we want to believe that oil shortages are on the way in our lifetimes, we have a responsibility to reconsider the way we choose to live. Driving our cars 45 minutes to more than an hour each way to work. Running errands across town. Traveling half an hour or more to meet with friends. Our structure of life as a country is imbalanced.

This continuing diminishing of the quality of life of more and more Americans. And we fundamentally have to change our approach to this.

That freedom, independence, and swagger has cost us the world’s most precious natural energy resource. We need a nationwide revolution in our concept of city planning. For the sake of our economy, our time, our relationships, and the health of our planet, we must consolidate, and move the most critical components of our lives into a village-like proximity. It’s a drastic move, but one which we can either make before an energy crisis or struggle to make after an energy crisis.

The Verdict: Americans must make respond NOW, by making significant lifestyle and community changes involving relocation, consolidated lifestyle activities, radically revised city planning, and drastically reduced automobile dependency in order to provide a sustainable lifestyle for their children and grandchildren.

**NOTE** There are many issues that arise from addressing this problem – questions which will not be easily answered. It is, however, a dialogue worth having, regardless of it’s inconvenience or difficulty. I hope you will join us in discussing and addressing this problem on CultureFeast.com in the weeks and months to come.

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New Batman Villains Hit the Wire: Open Thread

Daniel Dessinger — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:25:04 +0000

By Daniel Dessinger

September 12, 2008

The rumors are circulating about the next Batman movie. Who will be the villain? Which actor/actress will play the role? These are just speculations and rumors at this point. No new Batman villains have been officially announced. Here is the original story from Newsday.com.

Both of these rumored actors are excellent picks. I actually suggested Johnny Depp in my previous Batman post, but did not think he would actually go for it. If you think back on the bizarre roles he chooses, he is a compelling pick… I don’t think it’s the roles themselves, but rather how he plays them and puts his own unique spin to them…Jack Sparrow, Edward Scissor Hands, Willie Wonka – the list goes on. He would make an excellent Riddler.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the Penguin? I am not so sure about that. I mean, I do like the guy. I think. He always plays that character that just makes me anxious. I really can’t describe it. I would have preferred more of a Ray Liotta type, but Hoffman could be more interesting.

I am excited at the possibilities. Who will be the next Batman villain?

What do you think?

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Movie Review: Gone Baby Gone

Daniel Dessinger — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:33:45 +0000

By Daniel Dessinger

August 28, 2008

I usually do my best to review a movie, give my opinions and still keep the important surprises for you to discover on your own should you decide to see the movie.

I started a blog for Gone Baby Gone a few weeks ago but stopped because I realized that I didn’t really want to do a review about it. I didn’t want to tell you bits and pieces to intrigue you to see it. I wanted to have a commentary on it, and when I read this article today about a severely neglected and abused child, I knew that was what I had to do. The article may be long, but I IMPLORE you to read it.

There are so many thoughts – most of them of outrage – racing through my head right now, so it’s hard to know where to begin. I guess I’ll start with the movie’s storyline so that you can see why I drew the parallel with the article.

Casey Affleck stars as Patrick Kenzie, a born and bred Boston private investigator. He and his girlfriend, played by Michelle Monaghan from Made of Honor and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, are hired to search for a missing girl. Morgan Freeman plays Captain Jack Doyle. He lost his daughter many years before in a similar situation, and has since devoted his law enforcement career to keeping other parents from ever having to experience such a tragedy.

The little girl doesn’t exactly live in one of Boston’s best neighborhoods, and the mother’s pleas for help on local television newscasts seem a little disingenuous. So Doyle tells detectives Bressant (Ed Harris) and Poole (John Ashton) to collaborate with Kenzie and Gennaro (Monaghan). Evidence leads the investigators to believe that one of the local drug dealers has taken Amanda hostage because Amanda’s mother has stolen money from him. During a botched attempt to retrieve the young girl, she falls over a cliff and drowns in the water below.

Kenzie and Gennaro are haunted by the case. I saw the film several months ago in a fever-induced haze, so the details are a little fuzzy, but something leads Kenzie to continue digging until he discovers that Amanda is still alive and well. She didn’t drown, and she wasn’t kidnapped by a drug lord or a sick pedophile. Her uncle, who – along with his wife – hired Kenzie and Gennaro, worked in conjunction with Bressant and Doyle to take Amanda away from what they felt was an unhealthy atmosphere for a child.

While Amanda’s mother has been grieving (I type with a sneer) for her dead daughter, Amanda’s been thriving in a loving, caring environment with Captain Doyle and his wife. Kenzie is determined to return Amanda to her rightful place, but Gennaro tells him that if he does, she’ll leave him.

Ultimately, Kenzie goes with his law-abiding conscience and turns in Doyle, Bressant and Amanda’s uncle. Amanda is returned to her mother’s care (yet again, I type with a sneer), and the last scene of the film shows Kenzie staying home to babysit Amanda as her mother leaves for a date with a guy who contacted her because of the whole kidnapping charade. Everything is as it was. Amanda’s disappearance didn’t do a thing to change her mother’s attitude about child care.

Here’s the rub. I can see Kenzie’s point of view. I can see that it’s not right for someone to play judge, jury and executioner and decide what conditions are appropriate for a child. That’s what social services and child advocates are meant to do, BUT when, as in the case of the aforementioned article, complaints are made and nothing is done by those sworn to protect and serve, what other recourse is there? How many children have to be left for 7 YEARS huddled in their own urine and feces and covered with roaches and lice before someone will notice that the system isn’t working?

As the movie ended, I sat there balling. My friend said I was too sensitive and that I was taking it too seriously. After all, it’s “just a movie.” But I was imagining that there are children all over the world, maybe even right next door to me, who endure this sort of existence, and it breaks my heart. Then I read an article like The Girl In The Window and struggle with comprehending just how badly poor Danielle was abused, and in the same article, read about her mother saying that, “The boys were with her,” and that she has the paperwork to prove it and that that makes it all ok. Are you kidding me? It’s like reading a Holocaust survivor’s memoir and then having a White Supremacist look you in the eye and say that it never happened.

What’s the answer? What’s the solution? As I mentioned before, there are government agencies whose sole purpose is to work toward eliminating these situations and others which are charged with protecting those involved if the situation couldn’t be avoided. I think it’s disgustingly deplorable that a human being could be treated in such a fashion, but obviously those who would lie around in squalor and later excuse their actions or try to blame someone else, are mentally ill.

Has it always been this way, and we just didn’t know about it because communication and news dissemination was never this efficient or widespread? I have no answers. I’m left simply with the hope that there are more people like Danielle’s adoptive family in this world than there are like Danielle’s birth mother.

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Movie Review: The Dark Knight

Daniel Dessinger — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:09:04 +0000

By Daniel Dessinger

August 20, 2008

Here it is, people. The one for which you’ve all been waiting. Quite honestly, I was at a loss for how to start this one. I loved the movie. It was fabulous. I can’t wait to see the next installment, but even I’m getting tired of hearing myself sing the praises of practically every movie I review. I feel like I purposely need to start watching movies that I hate so that I can build some credibility, you know? Or at least to stop exhausting my thesaurus in search for new synonyms for words like spectacular and tremendous and mesmerizing and enchanting, etc.

I’d like to say that The Dark Knight picks up where Batman Begins left off, mainly because it just sounds cool, but I don’t really remember a lot of Batman Begins. I enjoyed it, but I only saw it once, and it wasn’t one that I felt like I needed to add to my collection. So for artistic sake, we’ll just say that it picks up where it left off, k? K.

Christian Bale reprises the role of multi-billionaire Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. Batman. This time around the Joker is his arch nemesis, which the amazing Gary Oldman as Lieutenant Jim Gordon alluded to at the end of Batman Begins. The story line goes a little something like this: Batman, Gordon and Gotham City’s new District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) are successfully ridding Gotham of some of the city’s worst criminals; until the psychopathic Joker (Ledger) comes along and spoils their plans.

No story would be complete without the love angle, and this one’s actually got a tri”angle.” Maggie Gyllenhaal takes over the role of Rachel Dawes from Katie Holmes, and Dent is just as determined to win her heart as he is to defeat the Joker and make Gotham City a respectable place to live. Of course, Bruce still hopes that one day he can put the Batman suit away, and he and Rachel can live happily ever after in Wayne Tower, surveying the city they helped to make livable.

But do you really care about the story line in a film like this? Sure it has to have a believable plot to follow or it flounders, but for the most part, it plays third or fourth fiddle to the special effects, the characters and the performances, which I suppose wouldn’t be nearly as fantastic without decent material from which to work.

All three (special effects, characters and performances) are tremendous in The Dark Knight. Bale’s Batman voice can be a little off-putting, but he’s got to fool everyone somehow because that gigantic bat mask covering the top half of his face just isn’t enough, right? Oldman is brilliant in anything, and Gyllenhaal and Eckhart turn in solid performances. But the real shining light is Ledger, and I’m not just saying that because he’s dead. He was awe-inspiring. It takes a lot to be super-creepy and humorous at the same time, and he pulled it off. It saddens me that he won’t be around to reprise his role in the next film.

I can’t say enough about the special effects. The bat gadgets are just plain fun, and there’s one chase sequence that left me breathless. It’s definitely one of the more innovative ones I’ve seen, and the make-up, especially for Dent as he begins to transition into the villain Two Face, is a little too believable.

My favorite thing about the new evolution of Batman: it doesn’t feel like a movie about a comic book. It feels real. I feel like Gotham City actually exists. The Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher renditions were entertaining and amusing, but Christopher Nolan’s creations are staggering. These are the sorts of timeless films that we’ll be showing our children in 10 to 15 years, and I think they’ll be every bit as mesmerizing then as they are now.

I do apologize for taking so long to blog about this one, but I tend to be a champion of the lesser-known films about which you’ve probably never heard. The Dark Knight was at the top of the box office for four weeks. The first weekend it pulled in a walloping $158,411,483. It’s safe to say that you’ve heard of it, and now you officially have my permission to see it.

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Irony, Existentialism, and Extraterrestrials, Oh My!

Daniel Dessinger — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:59:03 +0000

By Daniel Dessinger

August 13, 2008

Irony is defined in my trusty Webster’s New World Dictionary as an event or result that is the opposite of what is expected. It follows, logically, that ironic is opposite to what is or might be expected. So, by definition, it’s incredibly ironic that my movie viewing has decreased since I got this whole movie review blog gig.

There might be extenuating circumstances, i.e. going through an existential crisis that makes one question the last 2, possibly 3, years of one’s life, but that’s a different blog for a different website. Even if there is some sort of existential crisis, one would think that I would use movies to escape, and, therefore, have ample fodder from which to blog. On the contrary, I can’t seem to motivate myself to devote the 2 to 2.5 hours required for a movie. It’s much easier to turn on the equally trusty DVR and lose myself in a pointless, thoughtless hour long drama in which nothing of consequence really happens.

Most of what I’ve seen recently is too forgettable to deserve a blog. I finally saw Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. I’m pretty sure it got horrible reviews because it didn’t live up to the epic proportions of the Harry Potter adaptations, but I enjoyed the semi-tragic tale of the 3 children who were orphaned when their house mysteriously exploded with their parents inside.

Jim Carrey as the evil, money-grubbing “uncle” was more than a little annoying, but I love Liam Aiken, who portrayed Klaus, the middle child. Some of you may remember him as Susan Sarandon’s precious, magic-loving son in Stepmom. I thought the subtitles for Sunny’s (the little sister) mumblings and baby talk were extremely original, and Jude Law made for a great narrator. Meryl Streep’s performance was surprising and entertaining, and even though I’d recommend the film, it doesn’t really lend itself to a full length blog.

Neither does Dreamcatcher. Other than The Shawshank Redemption, I’m pretty sure it’s the only Stephen King adaptation I’ve seen. My desire to watch it was driven by my opinions of the starring actors. I’ve liked Damien Lewis ever since I saw him in Band of Brothers, and Timothy Olyphant was mesmerizing in the short-lived Deadwood series on HBO. Their performances in Dreamcatcher aren’t quite as stellar, but I don’t think the material was either.

I had hoped for something a little more original from the plot than aliens coming to take over the world. The Ojibwa Native American culture believes that dreamcatchers filter bad dreams from good ones. The bad ones get stuck in the net of woven sinew, and the good ones fly freely into the dreamer’s unconscious mind.

One would think with a plot device this diverse and unusual that the film would be truly original. Alas, there is only one reference to the dreamcatcher hanging from the ceiling of the cabin in which the four friends are staying. Speaking of the four friends, Jonesy, Beaver, Pete and Henry changed their lives forever the day they stumbled upon young Duddits being bullied. They gained a friend that day, and as the friendship grew, they also gained some interesting abilities. Is it possible that this retarded boy is more than he seems? Could he have given them all special powers that will one day save the world?

In addition to the regular routine of life that’s kept me too busy to see any of the latest box office hits, I had a good friend tell me tonight, somewhat tongue in cheek, that I haven’t seen enough movies to really excel in the movie review realm. My pride was a bit wounded. I like to think of myself as quite the movie connoisseur, and I’ve impressed many friends and acquaintances with my random movie trivia and knowledge. However, I’ve often said that there’s always someone who’s better at something than you are, and I guess my friend is more of an avid movie fan than I am. He also has a few extra years on me, but we won’t go into that.

So in the interest of becoming more qualified for this “gig,” I will do my best to devote more time to watching movies. After all, it is August in Dallas, which means it’ll be over 100 degrees for several days in a row. What better way to beat the heat than to sit in my comfortable home or in a frigid movie theater and lose myself for a few hours. I’m FINALLY going to see The Dark Knight this weekend, so even though I’m sure most of you have already seen it, check back next week for my review, unqualified though it may be.

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Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Daniel Dessinger — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 15:53:58 +0000

By Daniel Dessinger

August 12, 2008

Joss Whedon is known for forging new frontiers in television—he’s made us care about a girl who fought things that go bump in the night, a vampire with a soul, and a band of space pirates fighting the good fight. But now he’s crossed over to an even geekier medium and has taken the Internet by storm with his online project, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.”

Whedon and friends conceived Dr. Horrible during the writer’s strike, when they grew frustrated by the work stoppage and set out to change the face of entertainment by circumventing “the system.” It was a project made of a lot of heart, very little money, and as Joss puts it, “very mid-life-crisisy.”

Neil Patrick Harris stars as Dr. Horrible, an up-and-coming villain with his eyes on the big leagues—the Evil League of Evil. Dr. Horrible plots his new world order via his video blog, while his real-life alter ego Billy pines for Penny (Felicia Day), the beautiful girl at the laundromat that he can’t work up the courage to talk to. Standing in Dr. Horrible’s way—both personally and professionally—is Captain Hammer, the resident superhero, played by Whedon-favorite Nathan Fillion. And just so you know…his fists? They’re not the hammer.

The show—or “Internet miniseries event,” as Whedon refers to it—lives up to its name thanks to the catchy musical numbers interspersed throughout the action. Everyone gets a tune, with many songs showcasing Harris’ impressive vocal chops and Day’s lovely soprano. This is not Whedon’s first musical foray—he wrote a musical episode in season six of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” that has gained a wide cult following since the show went off the air, and he even penned the theme song to his short-lived hit show “Firefly.” His songwriting is simple and effective, drawing cues from traditional musical theater and leaving you humming the songs hours after you’ve watched the show.

Dr. Horrible is available for download on iTunes and for streaming on Hulu.com According to the website, a DVD and cast recording CD will be forthcoming later this year. For the latest news on all that is Horrible, visit the website at www.drhorrible.com or follow @drhorrible on www.twitter.com.

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Movie Review: Brideshead Revisited

Daniel Dessinger — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:01:59 +0000

By Daniel Dessinger

August 6, 2008

I had originally planned to spend my Wednesday evening at a screening of Death Race at Northpark. I knew it wasn’t going to be a movie that I would rave about later to friends, but it was free, and I figured it would diversify my blogging.

Then I got an invite to a free screening of Brideshead Revisited at the Magnolia. Much more my style AND the email boasted a brief Q&A afterward with the film’s star, Matthew Goode. People, the universe has granted me an early birthday present. It’s no secret that I have quite a few celebrity crushes, and he’s been one since I saw Chasing Liberty in 2004. My inner twelve year old was screaming with glee. I was going to be sharing the same air space with a very cute, very British, very tall boy.

Despite my glee, I was quite calm as the packed theater awaited the beginning of the film. As usual, I hadn’t read the book, and I’d only seen one trailer. I had gotten an Atonement feel from the trailer, but that was mainly due to the era and the undercurrent of class struggle. There’s much more class struggle to this one than to Atonement. The conflict in Atonement was mainly due to a little girl’s huge misunderstanding of very adult “things.” The conflict in Brideshead Revisited is quintessentially British: religion and status.

Goode is the attention-starved Charles Ryder. Charles suffers from a middle class upbringing. His mother died when he was young, and his father is dry and incapable of showing love and affection. When Charles arrives at Oxford to study history, he meets the beguiling Sebastian Flyte and is introduced to a world he thought possible only in his most vivid dreams.

Sebastian (Ben Whishaw) and Charles fill each other’s need for companionship and strike up a quick friendship, but it’s quite obvious that Sebastian would prefer it be less platonic. Although Charles cherishes Sebastian’s company, he is hypnotized by Sebastian’s world. Charles, an aspiring artist, is automatically speechless at the sight of Brideshead, the estate on which Sebastian grew up. His mouth practically waters as he begs Sebastian to let him tour the manor and grounds before the matriarch, Lady Marchmain (played brilliantly by Emma Thompson), returns.

When Lady Marchmain arrives, she brings Julia Flyte (Hayley Atwell), Sebastian’s beautiful sister, and Charles fully succumbs to the spell of Brideshead. He is a good and honest young man, but even the most virtuous of men cannot say no to the display of decadence and eccentricity which Sebastian and Julia provide him.

Every void must be filled, and Lady Marchmain’s saintly adherence to the Catholic faith more than fills the void made by Sebastian’s apparent lack of morality. She is exacting and pious to the extreme, which gives Charles one more thing with which to be fascinated. He soon finds that his lack of faith will be the barrier to his assimilation with the family. While Sebastian may be the black sheep, Julia aptly calls herself the “family’s shadow.” As Sebastian, a truly tortured soul, spins faster and faster into an alcohol induced downward spiral, Julia does her best to do as Mummy and her faith require, and Charles becomes more and more entangled in Lady Marchmain’s web.

The Q&A after the film was a unique experience. While I had viewed Charles as an innocent pawn in a powerful and manipulative world, hearing Matthew talk about the role made me realize that Charles might not be as innocent as I thought. The acting is superb; the scenery is spectacular, and even though it may not live up to the exhaustive TV miniseries from 1981, I found this production so intriguing that I’ve put the book on my “To Read” list, which sits right next to that “To Watch” list I’ve mentioned.

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Thoughts on The Bucket List

Daniel Dessinger — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 03:22:00 +0000

By Daniel Dessinger

August 1, 2008

Friday night. Just finished watching The Bucket List. I was expecting this to be one of those films that gets my wheels spinning. You know the kind. The ones that make you want to reevaluate your life and find more meaning in every waking moment and makes you kiss the bathroom floor out of gratefulness for the new day. That kind of stuff.

I give it a C. Yes, I had the self-evaluating thoughts. Yes, I’m sitting here writing about it now. But no, I was not moved to tears. And I was NOT challenged to live a more meaningful life. I love the actors. Maybe it was the execution. I’m not a director, so I don’t know what punch it lacked.

Still, to be fair, I am thinking about my life now, and how I can do things differently. Life is too short to waste on making money for making money’s sake. All my jillions of websites will all go away some day. CultureFeast may live on, but even that’s assuming too much at this point.

I cherish every moment spent with my baby girl. That is, unless she’s REALLY fussy. Then I’m less grateful. But I kiss her so often she gets tired of it. I’m so thrilled to have a daughter. I love on my wife, but not enough. She needs more of my time, and I need to give more of my time. I need to not be so focused on temporal crap.

This is all going away. It’s all aging and decomposing. Nothing is getting younger. Nothing gets newer. Time passes. People endure Time’s toll. And people die.

The young never like to talk about death. When it’s not a possibility, you live carelessly and without purpose. When time is limited, you seek to make the most of every breath like savoring every last drop of melted ice cream from the cone. We may never taste sugar again.

Every experience, every moment is like that. We may never taste sugar again.

Okay. Maybe a B.

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Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Daniel Dessinger — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:41:17 +0000

By Daniel Dessinger

July 30, 2008

Here’s your moment of shock and awe for the week. I have not seen the first two Indiana Jones films, and I only remember bits and pieces and Sean Connery (hehe) from the “Last Crusade.” Might I add that every time I see this card on someecards.com, I chuckle to myself because I’m still secretly hopeful that X-Men: The Last Stand will turn out to be X-Men: The Next to Last Stand.

I’ve heard mixed reviews from friends and acquaintances about The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Maybe that’s because it’s a disappointment compared to the other 3 films. Maybe it’s because 19 years is a long time to wait to revive a character. I can’t really speak for them, but I can say that it’s currently my favorite of the summer action blockbusters. Granted I haven’t seen a lot of the typical summer blockbusters. I think Ironman’s the only one I’ve seen that officially counts, but Wanted, The Incredible Hulk and The Dark Knight are all on my current “To Watch” list.

Even though I hadn’t seen the first two films, and I didn’t remember much from the third one, I was still able to enjoy the fourth installment. The friend with whom I went had seen the first two, and he recognized and appreciated some references from the previous films, but there wasn’t anything that took away from my understanding.

I’ve never been all gaga over Harrison Ford, so adding Disney’s former “golden child” Shia LaBeouf was a definite plus for me. I didn’t discover him until I saw The Greatest Game Ever Played a few years ago, but I’ve appreciated his performances ever since. He plays the cocky 50s greaser type Mutt Williams, and his motorcycle lends itself to one of the more entertaining scenes in the film.

Cate Blanchett isn’t exactly the glowing beauty she sometimes portrays, but she’s definitely proven her versatility with her role as Bob Dylan in last year’s I’m Not There. She delivered a solid performance as the psychic Ukrainian Col. Dr. Irina Spalko. Her accent was even convincing, except that she still says Jones like a proper Englishwoman.

Crystal Skull boasts some of the best special effects and fight sequences I’ve seen in awhile, but I think that’s something we’ve all come to expect from Steven Spielberg. There are plenty of twists and turns, and I was surprised by the central plotline at first, but I guess it became a little predictable toward the end. Thank god, George Lucas only wrote the story and not the screenplay, so the dialogue rises above simple junior high jargon. The special effects in the Star Wars films may be amazing, but no amount of techy fluff can cover up a horrible script.

My favorite part of this whole series: Spielberg and Lucas have managed to make a stereotypically “geeky” profession like archaeology infinitely cool. If I had seen these films when I was younger and before I made my college/career decisions, I can see the young me fashioning myself into the female version of Indy, but I’m more than a little claustrophobic, so maybe not.

As with most sequel-capable films these days, the audience is left with the possibility of more adventures – no riding off into the sunset for Indy and his cohorts this time. I know that I’ll definitely make time to watch the first three films now. I’m sure they won’t be as wonder-filled as they would have been if I’d watched them when they were originally released, but I’m sure they’ll still be good entertainment for a few hours.

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