Film Review: True Grit

We never get to see that much of Western movies anymore. True Grit is a nostalgic remembrance to those folks who lived in a not so distant past and a pleasant introduction to those of the younger people. A reminder to the latter group that there exists a genre where a vast wilderness on the screen doesn’t necessarily mean it’s produced by National Geographic.

True Grit follows the story of a teen-girl who took it upon herself to find the killer (Josh Brolin) of his father. She enlisted the help of Marshall Cagburn (Jeff Bridges) to help pursue for JOSH BROLIN and try to bring him back to her county and be punished.

In probably the first Coen Brothers film I saw where a bag of cash is neither the cause nor part of tension, True Grit easily lived up to my personal hype- most of which stemmed from my ever-growing admiration to the relaxed yet spectacular actor that is Jeff Bridges. The Coen Brothers know how to pick their actors and partner with them every single monumental project that may have. Jeff Bridge is a wonder to marvel at in the picture. He bears the unintentional recklessness of a typical whiskey-downer but he just carried the film especially in parts where there is a little reason in the narrative to hold my interest and attention. Barry Pepper also provided a sound support towards the climax and as the plot moves on after which.

Of course, neither would the usual mundane approach of the Coen Brothers to violence is to be missed in True Grit. Probably one of the reasons why I like their style; they treat some scenes that are supposed to be laid with shrieks and piercing scoring with the enthusiasm of a dead man and yet it works.

The Coen Brothers-they’re just geniuses.

Film Review: The Man Who Wasn't There

Billy Bob Thornton displays an utter display of lack in interest to life and its daily spectacle. He’s character seems to have the same reaction to a murder as to with a falling leaf. That, my friends, is someone you don’t want to encounter in a poker game.

In the Man Who Wasn’t there, Billy Bob Thornton Plays Ed Crane-a barber working together with his motor-mouthed brother-in-law who incidentally owns the place. Throughout the entire film, rarely does Ed be without a cigarette tucked in his mouth and curvy smokes filling his presence. Other than that, he has a wife (Frances McDormand) and together with his work it's practically all he has.

Ed is a good example of a man who thinks life is nothing but a stop-over before death-or so before a business opportunity.

When a strongly willed man barged into the barbershop afterhours, he talks his plan of looking for an investor and partner for a dry-cleaning business which got Ed’s inner desire for this venture.

This signalled the dawn of a criss-crossing maze which delivers just and logical conclusions yet for all the wrong reasons. The Coen brothers craftily lead us in every numerous turn but handled it with great pacing.

Billy Bob Thornton perfected the terse delivery of his dialogues in the film. In exchanges, he answers and talks with just the exact words he thinks needed of him without even showing any interest of holding an extended friendly conversation.

James Gandolfini ruffled mind and restricted imposing will produces for good encounters with Ed Crane. But the steal of the show has to be handed to Tony Shaloub who plays Freddy Riedenschneider-the top class lawyer Ed Crane tapped for his wife’s court defense. It may not be runaway since the Coens included a fine cast of characters to smitten the story with varying personalities.

For all the humour of The Man Who wasn’t There, an individual’s alienation and actions thereof were tightly explored by the Coen Brothers. Yes, Ed Crane is bored to death-but not the moviegoers.

Film Review: Mulholland Drive

Mulholland Drive puts you in a maze while you’re in it and leaves you in a drunken haze afterwards. Although I have knowledge beforehand that David Lynch’s works were weirdly unsettling, nothing had really prepared me what to expect on Mulholland Drive.

Expecting that the plot would be a tad too easy to follow would be a delusional and futile attempt. On the opening scene, one would have been encouraged to instantly draw up and guess the narrative up to the end just like someone who intelligently drafts his own March Madness bracket because it seems destined for that old got-into-accident-and-now-this-amnesia plot.

There are a lot of characters who appears to be out of synch in connection to the story causing you try to find where they fit exactly-which probably would continue long after the wee hours of every night you remember the film. You have this greased up monster of a man, this mafia boss who disturbingly spits out a sip of coffee into a pristine piece of table cloth, a cowboy who speaks rather in a threateningly prophetic manner and an old couple running out of a tin can.

Even the texture of the film is a dilemma. While watching it, I have this feeling that this was originally shot with the intention to be a TV movie (after a few research, it turned out that my gut feel was right.)

Mulholland Drive took all standard concepts of storytelling and just re-arranged it in the same manner an earthquake would do in a village full of mud-hats leaving the audience in total disarray yet determined to pick up the pieces to rebuild the thought only to be stonewalled by the disconcerting structure of the story.

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is a hauntingly weird film with no spectacular acting and a narrative that just completely destroys all hope of unlocking it but sure is a work of genius operating in a universe of his own.

Mulholland is just one plain complete package of bafflement but I am a hundred and ten percent sure that you don’t need to be a Sigmund Freud to appreciate the lesbo play.

Film Review: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

PLOT:

A deranged US Air Force Colonel orders his B-52 bombers to launch nuclear attacks on several Russian targets. Upon learning of the situation, the US President together with numerous high-ranking military personnel desperately tries to stop the attacks to prevent the setting off of the Doomsday Weapon which automatically detonates once an attack is made on Russian territory.

REVIEW:

The real and palpable possibility of a global nuclear meltdown is not one topic to be treated as a joke- especially in the 1960s when the Cold War is just in its puberty and both Washington and Moscow are a misunderstanding away from destructing the planet.

What Stanley Kubrick did was to bestow hilarity on the Cold War saga and lit it up onscreen with tickling satire. The grip of the ensuing doom and the rising degree of desperation are never lost despite the unforgiving laughter the satire may cause every time it appears. It is at times safe to say that there are times in the film where laughter is a decision because one could not prioritize the emotions that the film asks of.

“Gentlemen, you can’t fight here! This is the War Room!” Peter Seller’s US President Merkin Muffley role uttered this quotable line when General Buck Turgidson, a gum-chewing loose cannon who often delivers his line as if he has agitated balls in need of some urgent scratching, tried to haul down the Russian ambassador while inside the war room of the Pentagon. The irony is blissfully blatant and incongruous situations like that of Peter Seller’s other character of General Lionel Mandrake asking Colonel Bat Guano to shoot the Coca-Cola vending machine and retrieve loose coins so he could call the President of the USA and inform him the secret code to recall the bombers is as childish as it gets but the viewers are well-aware that the call is of great importance to the survival of humanity.

The film is full of watered-down maturity. It does not degrade the importance of the plot, what Stanley Kubrick did was to tackle it with an honest view of the ridiculousness of such thing ever happening.

Really? Nuclear World War?

Goodfellas: A Review

Life is easy with gangsters; almost everyone offers a shortcut to everything a gangster desires. With Goodfellas, film maker Martin Scorsese made an undeniably masterpiece of a film, let alone an arguable best of its genre, look as easy.

Goodfellas is a story of Henry Hill and his tale of about thirty-years of wheeling, dealing, and living a mob’s life told within two hours of cinema. The film starts with a young Henry deciding to grow up and realize his ambition of being a gangster. While the Godfather throws Michael into this kind of life out of hierarchal necessity, Henry in the Goodfellas laid out his plan from the beginning.

Unlike the Godfather, Goodfellas distilled its characters into a rather more human bunch of mobsters with the same murderous tendencies. When Tommy (Joe Pesci) killed made-man Billy Batts, after which he and his trio decided to dump him in some vacant lot they knew, probably having a stop-over in mom’s house to pick a shovel and have dinner while a dead man is on a parked car’s trunk are not the type of mobsters previous genre films would have treated their characters. The miracle is it worked without reducing the compelling attribute of the situation.

A steady stream of narration by Henry and a couple of other significant characters guided the structure and formation of the plot all throughout. The characters in the Goodfellas were built excellently. The trio of Ray Liotta, Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci were each defined well to the extent that no point over the course of the film would you confuse yourself as to why this character does things the way that we’ve been shown.

A gaggle of characters were introduced just as frequent as they disappear through various brutal erasures. Knives were stabbed at chests, bullets went flinging onto somebody’s toes and people were left rotting inside garbage trucks. It’s necessary in a mob flick but Scorsese did it in a grand style. Incorporating popular music instead of orchestra scoring and using stop-motion visuals while the narration is continuing often is a gimmick that unintentionally leads to crappy entirety but Scorsese is no mere director. He crafted it and succeeded. No contest.

One must wonder how on this planet Scorsese not managed to win the Oscar statuette that year. Had this been an issue inside the Goodfellas plot, Henry and his mob would have stabbed the non-voters immediately.

Thome Crushes 600th Career Homerun

Two successive crushed balls were enough for Jim Thome to enter the elite hitters'club of 600. Presumed to be the most silent build-up of a hitter's march towards homerun number 600, Jim Thome rounded the bases mindless of it and with possibly the feeling of satisfaction carrying the burden off his back; that finally, the chase is over and he's a bonafide member of the club that boasts of Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Babe Ruth and four others.

At age 40, only the legendary Babe Ruth had reached the 600 Homerun plateau faster than Jim Thome. The Bambino only needed 6, 921 at bats to do so. Thome did the same on his 8, 167th plate appearance.

After Thome's historic homerun, talks were immediately swayed as to whether Jim Thome will be elected to Cooperstown. Several experts were quick to remind everyone that the 600 of Thome is not enough to breathe hope in his Hall chances. Why? Because Jim Thome happened to be prolific during the Steroid Era. That Jim Thome isn't a transcendent star. That it takes Skip Bayless at least five hesitations to figure out if he should belong in the Hall of Fame. Summing it up means that they give little weight on Thome's statistic credentials. If that is the point then it may be derived that had Jim Thome did produce exactly the same numbers at exactly the same number of games but only this time around, played with a coastal team, say, New York or San Fransisco, Jim Thome may have filled the checkbox next to "transcendent ". Jim Thome was pronounced by some not worth of the call to Hall because his name lacks luster. Isn't it a shame?

He may led a league only one-time in total homers in a season but that doesn't take away the cumulative boggle that is 600. The bottom line is, 600 is 600 and only 8 players, out of more than 17,000 players that set foot on a Major League game, had ever accomplished this rare feat.

Rick Rypien Found Dead

In a span of a few months, another hockey hoodlum is found dead. Former Vancouver Canucks tough guy Rick Rypien was found dead inside his Alberta home and reports were that he took his own life. Rypien would have been playing for the reborn franchise of Winnipeg Jets this coming season.

Rick Rypien spent most of his career playing for the Vancouver Canucks and grew a reputation of a tough customer when it comes to fights and for which that he was my favorite in the NHL 2009 PC game to start a two-man melee. Boogard gone. Rypien gone. Tough guys dying young. [Yahoo! Sports]

The PBA: Where Playoff Games Can Be Taken For Granted

Tonight, we were sworn witnesses to one of the most awful twin bills the PBA had ever offered. Two contests that match the antics of its scripted telenovelas time slot counterparts. Not for the reason of high viewership but for its stench of fabrication. The fabrication part may not be true but be that as it may, the format that the PBA instituted for the semifinals have led to this kindof bad perception.

This PBA Governor Cup’s semi-finals format is appalling. Most of the teams’ chances are pinned on the other teams' performance. Of course they wouldn’t have to if only they did much better during the Elimination Round (that’s Talk n Text) but to carry-over their W-L slates onto the semifinals is bewildering.

Making it to the Semifinals should be enough of a reward for a team’s Elimination Round performance instead of the format where a high placing team like Talk n Text having an almost shoo-in ticket to the finals. This format even almost disregards one of the best sources of the best stories in sports: Upsets.

When TNT dropped its game against Petron during the first game, Ginebra were automatically out of the running for the last finals seat. This game only matters to Petron and Petron only. TNT can play Gilbert Lao as their point guard for the whole duration of that game and TNT will still be in the finals because they were assured of it already. On the other hand, Petron, with several injured KEY players, badly needs a win and a succeeding Ginebra win to enter the finals, which at the conclusion of tonight’s games, happened.

The problem is that the format encourages the tendency of shoo-in teams to take games for granted. It should never be, given that it is the playoffs. Every team should have the intense feeling that each game is a “must win” and each loss is a huge setback. This attitude was never in display during that TNT-Petron game-at least for one team. It is a disgusting playoffs sight. A team who takes a PLAYOFF game for granted!

Fans and critics who are very much aloud in their thoughts that the games were pre-meditated and fixed can’t be blamed because the format affords the tendency of such assumptions and tirades.

Jesus Christ. What is happening to the PBA.

Sunday's Mysteries

• It's not the Red Sox. And it's not the Yankees. Neither of these giants who need another starter snagged Ubaldo Jimenez from the Rockies. The 27 year old right-hander was sent to the Cleveland Indians in exchange for four prospects. [Sports Illustrated]

• Fedor Emalianenko might as well be on his way to retirement after Strikeforce Light Heavyweight champion Dan Henderson knocked the Russian soul out of well, the Russian MMA legend. [ESPN]

Jeter has already 3, 000 Homers. That is according to NBC

Apparently, Derek Jeter has already more homeruns than Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Jesus combined.