Movie Catch-Up: The Way Way Back, Walter Mitty, Carrie, and The Lone Ranger

The Way Way Back is Way Way Cool

Films about estranged, misunderstood teens featuring rather shy and introverted, eccentric kids struggling with finding their way in a rather cold, cruel world, such as with last year’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, remind me so strongly of my own quirky youth.  I see myself quite clearly within some of these socially awkward geeks on the fringes of their worlds, with their sometimes darker but heartfelt emotions showing through and a bit of superior intellect that only helps to further separate them from normalcy.  I’m right there with them!  I often felt like I was at the bottom of a swimming pool in my own out-of-my-depth existence.

This film, like Perks, features a young man of such caliber, 14-year-old Duncan, played with just the right amount of disaffection by Liam James, forced to tag along with his emotionally venerable mom Pam (Toni Collette), her rather smarmy, demeaning (and cheating) new boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell) – two great performances here, by the way - and Trent’s hideously self-absorbed, bratty little princess Steph (Zoe Levin) on their summer vacation.  Stumbling into a job at the local water park, which is its own magnet for quirky misfits, Duncan makes a connection with the unreserved Owen (Sam Rockwell) and starts to come out of his shell, making a stand, for both himself and his somewhat fragile mother.  He also develops a crush on a sweet local girl Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb) that makes his vacation the most memorable time of his young life.  The film is filled with great moments, characters, and dialogue, both downhearted and jovial, like the best of dramas.  It was a surprising delight to watch! 

It's No "Secret" I Liked the Life of Walter Mitty

I wasn’t expecting much from this film.  Usually, if they remake an old “classic” almost no one these days has ever heard of, it’s ravaged by the critics as unnecessary, even if we happened to like it.  The film that comes the closest, in my mind, is Mr. Deeds from 2002 starring Adam Sandler and Winona Ryder, which was based on the 1936 original, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur.  Critics ravaged it, yet I found it to be one of Sandler’s better movies.

            

This film follows suit.  I can’t speak to the original from 1947, starring Danny Kaye, because I’ve never seen it, but going in, I knew basically three things:  It was a remake of an old comedy, the plot concerned a quirky loser with an over-active imagination going on an adventure that apparently put his fantasies to shame, and that it stared Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, and Sean Penn in a cameo as a hotshot, globe-trotting photographer whom Mitty must find.  Like Sandler, I sometimes like Stiller, if the role and movie are just right (including Mystery Men), but I often find him over-exaggerated and grating. 

            

Not this time.  This time, the plot of the movie is so well written, it fits Stiller’s character to a T, and winds up being a real and inspirational crowd pleaser, as inventive as what is usually running through its main character’s head.  The dull and directionless Mitty, with the crazily vivid thought-life, not only went on the adventure of a lifetime, trying to track down a missing negative that was to become the cover shot for the last physical issue of Life Magazine, but, in the midst of losing everything, including his job, and having no purpose, he finds not just his reason for being, but finds out he had that purpose all along.  It's a brilliant twist at the end, I thought, once that final, elusive missing negative is found.  Another delight!

Didn't "Care" for the Remake of Carrie 

I’ve been wanting to see this remake of Carrie since it came out in October.  I even rated all the Stephen King theatrical movies around Halloween when it was released (linked here)

            

I think I got it out of my system.

“Chloe Grace Moretz!” I thought to myself.  “She was the one who played that little vampire girl in Let Me In!"  And despite the violence, that Kick-Ass movie was at least inventive, and once again, as Hit Girl, she was more than a match for anyone she was up against, no matter how big.  "She’s playing Carrie in this remake!" I thought, "and Julianne Moore is playing Margaret White.  And those previews, with all the updated CGI effects!  It should be sooooo good!”

            

I was soooo wrong.  Director Kimberly Pierce’s first mistake was doing the same thing Gus Van Zant did with the remake of Psycho.  Though they didn’t make a shot for shot remake, they still obviously used the same script as the first one, changing only just a few plot points here or there.  It made a person who might be familiar with the first one aware of the lesser acting, not only from the leads, but everyone from Judy Greer as the gym teacher to Portia Doubleday as Chris Hargensen.  A few people came out relatively unscathed here, from an acting standpoint, most notably Ansel Elgort as Tommy Ross, and Moretz and Moore don’t do too bad with their roles if you don’t compare them too closely to Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie in the original movie.  Still, it’s disheartening going in, expecting something a bit fresher, and finding almost the exact same dialogue from the original movie, like the scene where the gym teacher punishes the girls and Chris refuses to take it, or when Carrie is about to go to the prom and her mother says of her dress, “Red… I might have known it would be red…” and “I can see you’re dirty pillows…” and “They’re all gonna laugh at you.”  They also copied the tone, from the comedic prom preparation of Tommy and his buddies to the prom scene itself, with Carrie backlit when the stage catches fire, and Carrie’s fatal knife fight with her mother at the end.  Yet everything in the original was better, even those crazy, inexplicable candles all over Carrie’s house when she got home.  The only thing different here, besides the workmanlike direction of Pierce (of Boys Don’t Cry and Stop-Loss), are the CGI effects, which actually take the place of Brian DePalma’s expert direction, Mario Tosi’s superb camera work, and Paul Hirsh’s inspired editing from the original.  The 1976 film is a classic supernatural thriller in the great Hitchcock tradition.  The prom scene is almost a case study in how to make a classic Hitchcockian thriller, with Sue following the line of a rope with her eyes, up to the rafters, attached to a bucket right above Carrie's head, and then looks for the other end, finding it underneath the stage, held by Chris.  It was scenes like this that turned into a fondly remembered, bonafide classic horror film from the 70’s.  Even with the CGI effects, and Moretz doing her crazy best as the freak, dripping with blood, unleashing her awesome telekinetic power, it still just feels like such a cheap knock-off. 

            

And what about those effects?  DePalma had wanted to do Carrie’s rampage on the town from the novel, but didn’t have the money for it, so he settled for a quick shot of Carrie rolling and blowing up Chris and Billy’s car.  Here, she stomps her foot and makes the road nearly swallow it, then holds it in midair as Chris’s face pushes slowly through the cracked windshield.  It’s okay, but overall, still can’t compare with the original.

            

And the fact of the matter is, this special effects update has been done once before, with the two night TV miniseries from 2002 starring Angela Bettis and Patricia Clarkson as Carrie and her mother.  That one wasn’t as good as the DePalma classic either, but at least it used a different script, one much closer to the novel.  Despite finding Moretz and Moore doing an okay job in the acting department here, if you’re looking for a better remake of the novel with an original script and updated effects, I suggest you check out the TV miniseries.

The Lone Ranger Really IS Lone: Nobody Went To See Him in Theaters

Wow!  Cut it some slack, guys!

It’s already gone down in history as one of the biggest box office flops of recent years, right next to R.I.P.D., also from this year.  But don’t let that stop you from enjoying a mindless and fun action comedy starring Armie Hammer as the masked cowboy of legend, and Johnny Depp as his (somewhat) faithful sidekick Tonto.  I found this to be in the same vein as the Antonio Bandaras Zorro movies and the Brendan Fraser Mummy flicks.  I’ve certainly seen worse of this type.  The Will Smith Wild Wild West comes most readily to mind.  This one had about as much action and comedy as the Zorro and Mummy movies, so I don’t understand why it was such a flop, unless cynical critical and audience reaction merely kept more audiences away in droves.  Sure, it’s not Shakespeare, but then, neither are any Hollywood action comedies.  Just what was it about this one that made it so much worse than all the others that it deserved such a moniker as “one of the biggest flops in Hollywood history”?  Beats me?  Maybe they did overspend, but so did the makers of Hudson Hawk, and this thing is light years beyond that one! 

            

There, see.  And I barely even mentioned Johnny Depp’s very weird turn here as Tonto.  That’s because, if Johnny Depp is in it, playing anything even slightly unconventional, you can best believe it’s going to be a very weird turn.  But like all his other bizarre characters – and there have been many – I enjoyed Tonto too.

Gun-Free Zones Are Slaughterhouses

Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Ft. Hood, the Amish School Shooting, the Aurora Theater Shooting; Kurt Vonnegut's classic and satirical WWII novel Slaughterhouse Five seems to be increasing in number, as we encounter more and more stories about madmen taking guns into gun-free zones and unleashing a reign of bullets.  Slaughterhouse Five is becoming Slaughterhouse Six, or Seven, or Eight, as the occasions and numbers continue to stack up.

But that's not the case everywhere.  Take the recent Arapaho school shooting.  Student Claire Davis clung to life for a few days in the hospital before expiring, yet as tragic as that is, what is even more tragic is how liberal Democrats and leftist progressives are using this tragedy, and others like it, to push through more gun laws.  Hmm.  Don't we already have restrictive gun laws?  Why didn't they prevent the shooter, Carl Pierson, from entering that school?  

I have several thoughts about this whole thing.  First, are more gun laws really the answer, considering that the shooter Carl Pierson broke the gun laws that already exist to carry his guns and Molotov cocktails into the school?  These shooters plan, it seems to me, on emulating Klebold and Harris of Columbine High School infamy in gun-free zones with bunches of innocent, defenseless victims.  Thanks liberals!  But you might want to ask yourself one question:  Although it’s still tragic that Claire Davis lost her life, if Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Ft. Hood, the Amish school shooting, and the Aurora theater shooting had so many victims, how come there was only one this time?  You won’t find the answer in the official reports on most news channels, newspapers, or on the main websites for news organizations, which mostly all state that the shooter made his way to the library and took his own life with his gun, prompting nearby guards to the library.  I had to find and corroborate the real story, which the Washington Post confirms, that the shooter committed suicide only after an armed deputy cornered him in the library.  If you’re wondering why the regular news media isn’t reporting that, ask yourself if they support more gun laws or not.  If word leaked out to their regular viewers that this guy was stopped by another guy with a gun, well, that doesn’t sit well with their usual politics.

           

Another interesting piece of news from this story is how the gunman – or “gunchild” actually - was supposedly liberal, just like the psycho in the Aurora theater shooting, and how the parents of the victim forgave Pierson for killing their beautiful daughter, saying he didn’t know what he was doing, and asking for donations in Claire’s name for mental health and anti-bullying programs.  Because, in a way, these “monsters” are victims too.  Here’s yet another case of a killer and his victim forever linked because of his horrible crime, yet one has to wonder, as the victim’s parents have indicated, if the killer is really just another victim.  It shows how tragedy can come from anywhere, and now two families and a community are suffering because, once again, nobody saw the warning signs, or acted on them.  

It’s just so sad all over again.

Celebrity Creeps and Their Wonderful Movies: The Case of Woody Allen

“If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one.”

“Do not judge, lest you be judged.”

“I did not have sex with that girl.”

People, including liberals, love their sound bites.  I liked the way Ann Coulter put it when she said liberals claimed that their arguments were too sophisticated to fit on a bumper sticker.  She pointed out that “I ♥ Partial-Birth Abortions” fits just fine.

Politics is sticky business.  I was recently taken to task on my blog for judging celebrities, in this case Miley Cyrus for her now infamous twerking episode at the VMA awards last year.  This person applauded Miley for her “confidence”, saying that I should see that in her too and applaud her for it, and in the same breath, this anonymous person demonized Robin Thicke for his misogynistic song “Blurred Lines” that he sang next to a twerking Miley, writing about how the women in the video were nude and how he was objectifying them.  This person sat in judgment of me because I was sitting in judgment of Miley Cyrus and because I wasn’t, apparently, sitting in judgment of Robin Thicke (though I did judge him, and the lyrics to his song, and his R-rated video, in another blog post, and on Facebook).  I guess you just can’t win.  Some people will hate you no matter what you are, or what you do.  Take any kind of a stand, for anything, and people will hate you for it.  Don’t take a stand, and some people will hate you for that too!  Miley has a right to be an idiot, but that also means I have a right to think she’s an idiot for making the immoral choices she is making.  And maybe someday, when she looks back at her earlier choices, she'll think she was an idiot too.  But if you make any kind of a judgment call, people will judge you, even if their favorite bible quote happens to be “Do not judge”, which they pull out whenever you judge them or others, but which they happily forget when it’s time for them to dole out the judgment against judgmental Christians or misogynistic pop stars, while sticking up for the twerking idiot next to him.  Round and round and round it goes!

In light of all of this, what am I to make of the accusations of pedophilia against famed director Woody Allen by Mia Farrow’s now grown daughter Dylan?  She claims Woody molested her when she was seven, and, in an open letter to the New York Times, indicted Cate Blanchette and Alec Baldwin for working with him on his latest Oscar nominated film, Blue Jasmine.  Does she have the right to speak out against Woody?  If he really did what she claims he did, absolutely!  Indicting the actors who work in his films?  Um, not so much.  I can certainly understand her frustration, particularly with someone like Diane Keaton, who knew her when she was a little girl, and knows their family history.  But, as much as I’m not in love with Hollywood’s love affair with the left and all their liberal causes, you can’t fault an industry for applauding Woody for his work, or these actors for being in his movies – especially since most of them are so far left anyway.  If they had Christian morality, it might be a different story. 

If I was in her shoes and he had done that to me, and gotten away with it, I’d be so upset and angry, especially if he was enjoying career accolades and making good films.  Personally, I myself can name at least three Woody Allen films I really loved - Bullets of Broadway, Cassandra’s Dream, and Midnight in Paris – and a number of others I liked, such as Radio Days, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and going way back, Take the Money and Run. 

In truth, the fact that some of his movies are so darned good probably just makes the whole ordeal that much worse.  We might have to ask if his talent and career accolades might not be giving him a bit of carte blanche to get away with being a law-breaking, disgusting creep, and then lying about it.  If his movies stunk, might he already be in jail for fondling his stepdaughter so long ago? 

            
Of course, there are a few of his films I didn’t care for, and his famed and cherished Annie Hall is right there in the middle of all the Woody Allen films I didn’t like for their stream-of-conscience meanderings and pseudo-philosophical, bohemian pontificating.  It leaves me wondering, in light of these accusations from Dylan Farrow, should I feel guilty for liking Bullets Over Broadway and Midnight in Paris so much?  The answer, I think, is no.  The last time I checked, a movie is made by a lot of different people, helmed by a director, but it is not that director, or that actor, or that scriptwriter.  It is a combination of a lot of different minds, craftspeople, and artists, but first and foremost, it is there to simply tell a story, and hopefully tell it well, and, of course, turn a profit.  That’s show business, which is a show, and a business.  And if I was going to feel guilty over liking a movie based on the morality of some of the people involved in the making of the movie, I’d have to feel guilty for liking any movie I’ve ever seen.

            
Woody Allen should be behind bars if he did what Dylan Farrow claims he did, but it has apparently gone through the courts years ago, without enough evidence to convict.  Do I personally think he did it?  I don’t know, but I find it a distinct possibility.  We tend to put celebrities on a pedestal, but by the simple law of averages, some of them have got to be creeps.  Do I think Michael Jackson was a pedophile, and do I think he molested choreographer Wade Robson when he just a kid?  Yes, it’s very, very likely.  Does this make me second guess whether or not I should buy his music?  Absolutely.  You have to draw the line somewhere.  Whereas Woody Allen’s movies are so much more than just “directed by Woody Allen”, a musician’s music is a tad more individual.  If Woody Allen was a singer and produced a CD (now there’s a thought!), I wouldn’t buy it.  I did, however, buy the soundtrack to Midnight in Paris because I liked all the music from that movie.  Why should a person deprive him or herself of the pleasures of Sidney Bechet’s trombone or Stephane Wrembel’s excellent guitar just because the guy who directed the movie their music is in might be a disgusting creep?  Again, if that’s the case, I might as well throw away every secular movie, CD, and book I own, and maybe even some Christian product, and live in a bubble. 

Besides, there is a lot more going on in the world than just whether or not this or that celebrity is a creepy creep, or a tragic statistic, be it Dennis Rodman wooing North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and starting to sound like Ozzy Osborne on a bad day, or the horrid tragedy of famed and talented actor Philip Seymour Hoffman dying with a heroin needle sticking out of his arm.  There are certainly lessons to be learned here, I think, but as much as I might personally like dwelling on them sometimes, especially since I am such a film freak and TV watcher, I realize there is much more going on out in the world than celebrities and the movies, TV shows, books, and music they like to make, and that I sometimes like to enjoy and dissect.

And in my next blog post, I'll talk about just a few of them.

The Best and Worst Movies of 1998

I had meant to finish these lists of favorite 90's movies sometime last year, but alas, it didn't happen.  These are my lists of favorite and least favorite films from the entire decade of the 90's, and there's always the last 14 years to do as well, and I could always tackle the 70's and 80's and even earlier films sometime.  These are my picks for my favorites and stinkers of all the films I've seen, along with the biggest hits with critics at the Oscars and audiences at the box office for easy comparison.  So, without further adieu, here's my top ten list for the films of 1998:

The Best:

A Bug’s Life
Immediately after Pixar released the ultra-popular first fully CGI animated movie Toy Story, they followed it up with this tale of an independently minded ant hiring a group of circus bugs he mistakes for mercenaries to take on a group of thuggish grasshoppers.  Released at about the same time as Dreamwork's first foray in CGI animation, the very similarly themed Antz, it was A Bug's Life that garnered more attention at the box office, even if, all these years later, Antz has a slightly higher critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  I was charmed from the get-go, and this was one of those movies that showed how Pixar was equally adept at making the story really about something.  The voice cast including Dave Foley, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Kevin Spacey, Dennis Leary, Phyllis Diller, Brad Garrett, Bonnie Hunt, Madeline Kahn, David Hyde-Pierce, Jonathan Harris, and Richard Kind were a delight and fit their computer animated characters beautifully.

Dark City
A darkly visual treat!  Despite Keifer Sutherland's bit of overacting, this sci-fi mystery is quite entertaining, with some great suspense, horror, and, unusual for a film of this type, a very satisfying conclusion.  Rufus Sewell, as an amnesiac and murder suspect named Murdock, runs afoul of certain people and forces in his little world that cause his entire life and identity to start unraveling.  Added to the mix are the spooky bald men in black, known simply as "The Strangers", who seem to run things, and it seems this Murdock is a stumbling block for their plans.  Noir-ishly stylistic, this film combines the best elements of many different genres.

Ever After
This retelling of the Cinderella legend presents its material as "the real story," as an old woman tells the Brothers Grimm her real life story.  Drew Barrymore is wonderful as the high-spirited and forthright Danielle, who loses her father and becomes a slave in her own house to her wicked stepmother, played with delicious and devious glee by Anjelica Huston.  Although one of the evil step-sisters is softened here (Melanie Lynskey as Jacqueline) the other (Megan Dodds as Marguerite) is as enjoyably evil as the stepmother.  Dougray Scott as the Prince and Patrick Godfrey as Leonardo DaVinci round out a pleasant cast, but it is Barrymore that centers this charming fantasy film.

Hard Rain
A bank heist gone wrong during a literal downpour is the backdrop for this thrilling action film starring Christian Slater as the hero and Morgan Freeman as the bad guy.

The Mask of Zorro
A film similar to The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser and the Indiana Jones franchise in that it harkens back to the classic old movies of Erroll Flynn and some of the classic movie serials of the 50's, this one resurrects the legend of Zorro for a fun romp through the old west with an all-star cast that includes Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Antonio Bandaras.  

Mighty Joe Young
Seven years before Peter Jackson attempted to resurrect the timeless tale of King Kong, this retelling of the quieter and simpler story of Mighty Joe Young is a superb and heart-felt film for the whole family.  The effects are wonderful, but not really "showy", and still take a back seat to the story of a girl (Charlize Theron) and the huge but lovable gorilla she befriends.

Saving Private Ryan
Still one of the best war movies I've ever seen, this film juggles themes of war and peace, honor, bravery, loyalty, cowardice, patriotism, love and hate, and life and death, all centered around the meaning of it all.  A group of reluctant officers are assigned to retrieve a single soldier, Private Ryan, whose four brothers have already been killed.  Plagued by questions of whether or not this particular mission is worth the risk for only one soldier, and with friends and fellow soldiers dying along the way, I still have yet to see any war film surpass the excellent job they managed to do here!

Shakespeare in Love
A completely different film than Saving Private Ryan, many people cried foul when this won Best Picture at the Oscars instead of Spielberg's war film.  But just because it's different doesn't mean it isn't worthy of the title "Best Picture".  Of course, it's not really biographical, yet they have a bit of fun playing around with some of the concepts in Shakespeare's plays, particularly Romeo and Juliet, and applying them to Shakespeare himself, as he attempts to write his new tragedy and ends up falling in love with Viola De Lesseps, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, and who is herself enamored of Shakespeare's plays, and intent on performing in them, even though women are not allowed.  The film expertly juggles the concepts and Shakespeare's plays, language, and the times in which he lived, and the performances are all quite enjoyable, including Geoffrey Rush, Tom Wilkinson, Colin Firth, Ben Affleck, and Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth.  

A Simple Plan
One of Sam Raimi's better films, and after a likable performance in Mightly Joe Young, actor Bill Paxton was on a roll this year as well.  Here he plays Hank, a simple man who comes across a downed plane full of stolen drug money, along with his dimwitted brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thorton in one of his better performances) and another "friend" (Brent Briscoe as "Lou"), and against his better judgment, they decide to keep it.  Because of this, his safe little world and amiable relationships are all suddenly cut open, like a festering wound, and he is shocked to discover some of the things his friends and family, including his now rather devious, pregnant wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda), and even he himself, are capable of now that this money has come into their lives.  Every scene shows his world crumbling just a little bit more, as he becomes stuck further and further in a worsening trap he can't get out of.  If you like thrillers, this one has a lot of "fun" twists and turns.

The Wedding Singer
Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore's first movie together proves they are a good match.  Sandler has a lot of fun as a wedding singer who begins falling for Drew Barrymore's Julia, set to marry another man.  This comedy revels in all the conventions of the eighties, including Madonna and Michael Jackson fashion, and before the end, even Billy Idol shows up to help woo Julia away from her butt-head boyfriend.  This is a charming and funny film, making it one of the better romantic comedies I've ever seen.

The Best of the Rest:

American History X

Apt Pupil

Blade

Bride of Chucky

Godzilla

Hope Floats

The Man in the Iron Mask

Mulan

Stepmom

There’s Something about Mary

There's something for everyone to like on this list of the best of the rest.  There's the Disney animated Mulan, the fun and raunchy comedy There's Something About Mary with Cameron Diaz and Ben Stiller, the romantic Hope Floats with Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick Jr., the family drama Stepmom with Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon, the fun swashbuckler The Man in the Iron Mask, and the first foray into the comic book world of the half-vampire superhero Blade.  A few darker films included the over-the-top action/horror blockbuster Godzilla starring Matthew Broderick, the searing drama American History X dealing with white supremacists, the Stephen King penned tale Apt Pupil, about a straight A student who suddenly become enraptured with his former Nazi neighbor, and the forth go-round for the little killer doll Chucky, who here gets a bride named Tiffany, (voiced by Jennifer Tilly), as someone to humorously and gleefully share in his psychoses.   

The Worst:

The Avengers

Beloved

City of Angels

Krippendorf’s Tribe

A Night at the Roxbury

Senseless

Species II

Vampires

What Dreams May Come

Wrongfully Accused

If there's a best, there's also, of course, a worst, and topping the list - yes, even worse than Krippendorf's Tribe and Wrongfully Accused - is Oprah's pet project and labor of love, Beloved, a filmed version of Toni Morrison's book dealing with slavery, the plight of the blacks over the years, and some disgusting and disgustingly creepy dead girl who, if I'm not mistaken, is supposed to represent some of the negative things that have happened to the blacks in America over the years.  Let me just say, it doesn't translate so well to film.  Other disappointments include bringing the old English spy show The Avengers to the big screen, faulty Christian theology in both City of Angels and What Dreams May Come, a bad vampire movie courtesy of John Carpenter, another amusing SNL skit turned into an expanded, bloated mess, a needless sequel to Species, and Marlon Wayans in a dumb, "senseless" comedy. 

Oscars and Box Office:

I had already named Life is Beautiful as one of last year's worst films.  Perhaps it was because it was released in Italy in 1997 and abroad in 1998, who knows?  But I definitely don't think it deserved to be nominated as Best Picture, or win for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor Roberto Benigni.  I can think of plenty of other films - Schindler's List, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Europa Europa - that dealt with the holocaust of World War II with poignancy and without feeling like such a cheat.  Of course, both Shakespeare in Love, winner of Best Picture, and Best Picture nominee Saving Private Ryan, both also in the Box Office top ten, were in my own top ten as well, while What Dreams May Come, winner of Best Visual Effects, was in my list of worst films.  The others I saw - Elizabeth, God's and Monsters, The Prince of Egypt, and The Truman Show - were okay, but I've seen better.  I'd like to see The Thin Red Line sometime, and I haven't seen Affliction.
     This was also the year of competing films about meteors and asteroids smashing into the earth, and although audiences liked Armageddon more than Deep Impact, I was just the opposite, Both of them made it into the top ten at the box office, since they were designed to be "crowd pleasers", yet neither of them made it into my personal top twenty for the year.  And I suppose Dr. Doolittle and Lethal Weapon 4 were okay, but there was still little reason for either of them to be made, other than making money for their studios.  That poster featuring the cast of Lethal Weapon 4 is starting to look pretty darn crowded!

Top Oscar Picks:

Shakespeare in Love
Elizabeth
Life is Beautiful
Saving Private Ryan
The Thin Red Line
Affliction
God's and Monsters
The Prince of Egypt
What Dreams May Come
The Truman Show

And the top 10 Box Office hits:
Armageddon
Saving Private Ryan
Godzilla
There's Something About Mary
A Bug's Life
Deep Impact
Mulan
Dr. Doolittle
Shakespeare in Love
Lethal Weapon 4

Liberals Revealing Themselves: Sometimes It's a Good Thing

Not only are my journals a bit of a mess, and in need of some major cleaning, the same could be said of this nation, and this world, and the people in it.  That even includes me.

Someone I know - a liberal - is very upset now with Obamacare, and has been seriously considering jumping ship and joining the republicans!  Of course this person -I'll call him or her "Pat" - is not really serious, I'm sure, though he or she isn't even aware that (s)he's not serious.  Pat's number one candidate on the republican ticket is Chris Christie, and Pat loaned me an article about him in Time magazine; you know, that paragon of objective journalism that, like most other media out there, has no political bias what-so-ever (Darn, I just can’t say things like that with a straight face, now can I!)  Now some people may be thrilled with Chris Christie, but if he’s the one the hard line leftist liberals are looking at in the face of disillusionment over their darling democratic and socialist healthcare fiasco, then you know he’s not really my front-runner!  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” Pat scolded me, with nearly the same breath (s)he used to tell me that Hillary Clinton isn’t running for the Democratic ticket and had little or nothing to do with Benghazi, “it’s not socialist healthcare in the first place."  Then Pat proceeded to outline why it’s not, using those ridiculous talking points (s)he picked up from Chris Matthews and Rachel Madcow, no doubt.  Pat wants to support Christie, and said (s)he may jump ship and cross that political aisle, but it’s quite clear to me that Pat’s about as much a conservative republican as I am a free-love hippie!  And what does that say about Christie as a candidate?  The writer for Time, of course, took great pains to show just how non-Conservative Ronald Reagan really was, and to compare Christie to Reagan.  And I’ll even admit that he may be somewhat right – all politicians have to "play ball" and soften their politics and work with the other party.  Reagan had to make concessions just like everyone else, and concede certain things to Tip O’Neill and the liberals.  That may water down his conservativism, but everyone has to make some concessions... except, apparently, Obama and the current Democratic administration.  (Hey, look!  My writing is getting a bit snarky, just like Ann Coulter!  I’m so proud!)  My fear is that Christie is another John McCain or John Boehner – a liberal secret weapon – and that Marco Rubio waiting over there in the wings, who I usually like, may also have more in common with the likes of them than with the likes of Paul Rand and Ted Cruz after that “let’s excuse all the illegal immigrants” fiasco he and McCain were involved in this year.  ‘You can’t deport 11 million illegal immigrants, and we can’t have guards every few feet at the border,” Pat informed me.  Does Pat sound conservative to you? 

            Anyway, I digress.  My question is:  How many of our values are we going to have to forsake in order to elect an actually electable republican candidate in this completely moral-less society that sees nothing wrong with, and in fact will fight for the right for, killing babies in the womb, but comes unglued when a gay couple is refused a wedding cake at a privately owned bakery?  How many of our Christian, God-breathed morals are we going to have to forsake in order to bring someone into the White House who appeals not only to the right-wing conservatives, but also most of the libertarians, the liberals who are not so far left, and the social liberals like Pat who have momentarily become fiscal conservatives because of the travesty of Obamacare?  It is starting to seem like more and more of an impossibility that anyone further right than McCain and Chris Christie stands about the same chance as an icicle in Death Valley of becoming the next President of the United States.  And if you don’t think there’s a possibility of a President Hillary Clinton in 2016 America, then you must be more asleep than the sheep that would vote her in, ‘cause this nation is nowhere near what it once was.  This nation under six years of Obama, and two more to go, is a complete mess (and they’re STILL blaming Bush Jr.!).  Four or eight more years under another freakin’ liberal and it will be irretrievable, and will probably go down in flames, and become just another socialist country, no better than any other – just the way the liberals have always wanted it: Weak and blasé.  

That's not to say they don't reveal themselves sometimes, like Barbara Walters did recently when she said "they" were expecting Obama to be "the next Messiah"(!)  I always knew, but I'm shocked to actually hear one of them admit it out loud on national television.  But then, give them time and they will eventually be revealed for the America-bashing, Christian-hating, Obama-worshiping socialists they always were at heart, and they only bring it on themselves.  I can’t wait to see who else is going to run their mouths just a little too much!  On MSNBC, it could be somebody every week!  They’ve already worked their way through Keith Olberman, Martin Bashir, and Alec Baldwin.  Could Rachal Maddow, Chris Matthews, and that sanctimonious, biased Andrea Mitchell be all that far behind?  People would have to be about as dumb as a rock not to see the obvious bias these supposedly objective news reporters have, but then, MSNBC does have their loyal followers.  That’s right, I’m implying stupidity in the fan base here.  I just finished reading 1984, and the devout MSNBC viewers, or anyone who refuses to see the obvious bias there or in most of the rest of the media, remind me of the brainwashed minions who work for the Party, distorting history and then actually believing the new history they distort due to some sort of weird mind-game called Newspeak that warp their view of reality and truth, or they are the idiotic “proles” from that same novel, who are not a part of the Party, but are so dumb that they will never become a real threat to them.  Who knows, if we didn’t have conservative radio and Fox News, how many more of us would be asleep like they are?

     I can certainly see the liberal bias, and I don’t understand how the party that claims to be so freakin’ tolerant and loving can say the things they do.  Oh sure, they eventually pay the price; Alec Baldwin for making gay slurs, Martin Bashir for stating that Sarah Palin is an idiot and then implying that she should have someone defecate in her mouth, or Keith Olberman for, well, just being himself.  The funny thing is, all the liberal hard liners (who don’t even realize that they are, in fact, liberal hardliners) would all excuse them, just as they do the President.  If I brought any of this up to Pat, who I talked about above, and who is probably allergic to the label "liberal" (like all true liberals are), my guess is that Pat's first response would be to question Sarah Palin comparing our current economic crisis to slavery, and would probably excuse Martin Bashir’s comment since he made it in such an articulate way.  “He went too far,” I’m sure Pat would say, “but that doesn’t mean his comments don’t have merit.”  I understand what Sarah Palin meant.  Our current economy is holding our kids hostage.  They will have to pay tomorrow for the freebies we get today.  In a way, that is a form of slavery, which is defined on the website Dictionary.com as “involuntary subjection to another or others,” and its synonym “bondage” means “a state of subjugation or captivity often involving burdensome or degrading labor.”  That definition still fits here, and if you can’t see the correlation, you must be a devout MSNBC watcher. 

     I’m also fascinated by the thing going on right now between A&E and Duck Dynasty.  Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson, as just about everyone knows, said some core Christian biblical truths in a rather rough way during an interview with GQ.  The gist of what he said was from 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, which states (NLT), “Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don’t fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people—none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God.”  Well, the liberals were up in arms, and GLAAD came unglued, shooting off an agitated letter to A&E because they were so offended.  So then A&E, in its infinite wisdom, decided to suspend the patriarch of its biggest hit show of their entire existence.  When the expected backlash occurred, with thousands – perhaps tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands - of angry Christians threatening a boycott for A&E’s dumb decision, they backed down.  It’s all business anyway.  Because of free speech, Robertson had a right to say what he said.  Because of free speech, GLAAD and the liberals had the right to be offended.  A&E had the right to suspend Robertson.  The Christian right had the right to boycott their show and make their voices heard.  The Duck Dynasty clan has the right to take their hit show elsewhere.  Why Cracker Barrel would want to wade into the middle of this is beyond me, but they also have the right to voice their opinion, and to relent when the Christians give them a “what for” warning.

     I’m glad to see the voice of Christians is still heard loud and clear in this country.  I’m sure Nancy Pelosi, Barak Obama, and GLAAD would like nothing more than a bunch of brainwashed Party members and idiotic “proles” to control, but it’s not at that point… yet.  But don’t think for one second that it can’t become that way eventually.  Most of our young people are being brainwashed right now, even as I write this, to see nothing wrong with homosexuals, abortion, premarital sex, or drug use, and are, right now, being taught that all news media is fair and balanced except Fox News and conservative talk radio, that President Obama is their friend, and that those Christian right hooligans are nobody’s friends, and that God doesn’t exist.   

     Right now, we are a divided nation, divided up by right and left politically.  I wouldn’t say I’m on the extreme far right, but I’m pretty far over with my views on gay marriage and the belief knowledge that the life inside the womb is a living human being, and I stand with Phil and those like him who know the bible believes that practicing homosexuality is a sin (notice how it is the act that is a sin, not the people), and that it is only one of many sins, and that we all commit sins, even those of us way over on the right, but that God does want us to judge right and wrong and repent of these sins, which means “try not to commit them.”  (So while we're on the subject, so called gay Christians either aren’t repenting or refuse to see homosexual acts as sinful.)  

     Those on the far left don’t seem to have any problem with anything, and even invoke the name of Jesus when they stand for love of everything and all the acts that the bible itself says are sinful.  You’ll hear them say things like “The Jesus I believe in is a God of love,” and “The Bible says you shouldn’t judge,” and “the bible was written by people.”  They turn Jesus into a compromising Mr. Rogers type, prancing around preaching nothing but peace and love for everyone, no matter who they are or what they do, and they think that loving our enemies, as Jesus taught, means also accepting all they do.  They try to turn us into compromising milquetoasts, and the bible into a flawed ancient manuscript dreamt up by flawed humans.  These people may think they are Christians, but they are not Christians.  Christians believe what the bible says, warts and all, and they don’t try to distort it.  This world, and this nation, has major problems with what the bible says, and if you follow along with what the world thinks of Jesus, Christians, and the bible, than you are not a Christian.  Jesus warns us of this very thing in the bible when He says the world will hate us because of Him.  If they can’t see that, and side with the world, and turn Jesus into someone he definitely wasn’t or isn’t or will be, then they are not Christians.

     In between these two extremes is all the various shades of grey leading up to the middle of the political line, including some with various viewpoints that may not even be on this particular line, but are still heavily influenced by the politics and philosophies of the ages, whether they realize it or not.

     And I think that’s enough of my twisty political/religious ideas I seem to be just vomiting out of the top of my head tonight!  By the same token, I feel it’s something I probably needed to vomit out of the top of my head tonight.

Christmas Mess (Jesus, Take Me Away!): My Christmas Poem This Year

Twas a few days before Christmas

And things haven't calmed down at all

But it was time to share this year's poem

Before heading again to the mall

Drum roll (d-d-d-d-d-d-d):

That's my Christmas poem with all the pictures added, but here it is in a bit more readable format:

Christmas Mess (Jesus, Take Me Away!)

            A word of advice from writers is to just write what you’re feeling

Okay… Everything’s a jumbled mess!  I need some Christmas healing!

              So let’s just jump into the fray

              To see what’s on my mind today:

          Why is this Christmas such a struggle

               With so many things in the air to juggle?

     I shoveled the walk and cleaned the eaves

          Haven’t set up the tree, never finished the leaves

     Everything is URGENT, everything is CRITICAL

I’m tired of all the little fights, familial and political

The world is a disaster, and we’re breathing putrid smog

     I’ve barely touched my journal, haven’t posted in my blog

     I’ve written a poem tying Christmas to the ocean blue

Don’t like it… won’t share it… bit off more than I could chew

The pictures are in disarray and I haven’t even been cropping

We’re eating out too much with all the shopping

     shopping         Shopping         SHOPPING!

We shop on mornings and weekends since I now work night shifts

     Everything’s so expensive, and I can’t find the right gifts

Mom’s arms, legs and back have been hurting, and my sinuses are a joke

   The weather has turned freezing cold & the refrigerator just broke

     My tropical fish haven’t been doing all that well lately, no sir!

There’s more gifts to buy and Christmas is  inching   ever   closer!

And I still have to engage this whole new healthcare endeavor

There’s still cards and decorating, and this poem is taking forever!

     It seems we’re so busy sometimes, we’re just about ready to drop

The DVR is almost full and we need to bake …    STOP!

            This isn’t at all what Christmas is supposed to be about!

            Things can get so out of hand and turned so inside out!

            Christmas can get so jumbled, we miss the reason it’s here

            Lost in a mess of our making, the meaning is no longer clear

                        That cut to the core, Christmas has always been just about Jesus

                        A celebration of His birth, and His death on the cross that frees us

                        From our burden of sin that we’d all die from without

                        The willing sacrifice of Christ!  That’s what Christmas is about!

     That’s the Christmas message I really want to convey

   Now God, get me off this crazy ride; Jesus, lead the way!

Gary Van Buren                                                                                                     Christmas 2013