Mare Somniorum

It’s been a while since I last saw “The Fog of War”.  For those of us too young to actually have experienced the “cold war” there are endless ways to be told about the time in question.  Few however have hit me as deeply as “The Fog of War”.  Robert S. McNamara was in his mid eighties during the course of the interviews that, in essence, is this documentary.  It is a compelling story of a man who’s been there, done that and had to live with those actions. In “The Fog of War” we are presented with 11 lessons from his life and they’re hard to brush aside as “just words” when McNamara talks.

A lot of people have their own perception of the man Robert Strange McNamara.  No matter the perception, this will shed light over it. When you see him as an old man, and realize he could give any orator a run for his money, you can’t help wonder how he must have been in his prime. No wonder he could polarize a room by entering it.

Anyway, it’s not a history lesson. It’s one mans subjective take on 80-odd years of experience. It’s one mans subjective understanding of people, nations and their relationships. It’s one mans subjective take on wars and their consequences. With that being said, McNamara is an amazing man to listen to. When you couple this with taped recordings between of him advising the presidents he served under, you just blink a few times. When Lyndon B. Johnson says explicitly that he wants to “kill some of them” with regards to Vietnam there is a pause before McNamara replies that he’ll see what he can produce to achieve that goal.

And McNamara makes few excuses. He tries, mostly with great success, to explain why certain choices were made. One of the lessons is that “Rationality will not save us”, rational leaders both in Kremlin and in Washington tried to avoid war over Cuba, but the lack of information available to both sides made talking difficult to say the least. Or as a line given to McNamara in the movie “Thirteen Days” goes with regards to the blockade “This is not a blockade. This is language. A new vocabulary, the likes of which the world has never seen! This is President Kennedy communicating with Secretary Khrushchev!”

He might not have said those words in real life, but after watching “The Fog of War”, you imagine he just might have said just that. The lessons are hard, and painful, and as he says, he tries to learn from his mistakes, we all do. You repeat them a few times and then learn. But he also says that there will be no learning with nuclear weapons, we make one mistake and we obliterate nations. This, as he said, is what they were trying to avoid.

Considering all the flak he’s taken over the decades I was also surprised at McNamaras ability to talk about fairly sensitive issues without much anger. We see him fight tears and smile, even laugh, we see him somewhat agitated, but we never see him upset or angry at anything said to him, if anything, he’s angry with the lack of human learning, his own included. It is truly an amazing journey into a mans mind and it is a gift to us all that Errol Morris shot the movie.

During the interview, McNamara wishes to highlight the following for us, and I thought I’d pass it along:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Elliot, “Little Gidding”

Yes, there is hype.  Yes, everyone is talking about Heath Ledger, and yes, it is very good.  I’m not going to say a lot about it in general, but if you like Nolans work, and don’t mind some brooding, you’ll probably like “The Dark Knight”.  I’ll just say I was hoping it’d be as good as “Batman Begins”, which it wasn’t.  “The Dark Knight” was better by a lot.

Well worth seeing, hype or not.  Loads of good tidbits in the movie, especially a mad dog on the loose through Gothams streets.

Let’s face it, there are times you spend a few hours doing things that aren’t intellectually stimulating. That however does not mean these hours can’t be entertaining or enjoyable. Watching The Bourne Ultimatum certainly isn’t an exercise in intellectual fulfillment, but to be honest, there are worse things you could do with your time.

I’m not exactly fond of Damon labeling Bourne as the “new James Bond of our times” or some such, as I feel those two characters share awfully little, but once I get over that little hangup the Bourne trilogy has its merits. The last installment is now here and it’s one long cat and mouse game — a game that sometimes doesn’t quite know when to move on (I’m looking at the bit in Morocco in particular), but meh, it could be worse. Much, much worse.

Stiles is back as well, and, well, you’re not going to miss that. You might however forget that the movie is about that other guy dude thingy that’s busy with some bad people who want to hurt him. All that is quite irrelevant when Stiles is on screen. The upside to this is that one of the bad men that want to make this other guys life less pleasant before coming to an abrupt halt is Scott Glenn. Glenn might not be the actor of our times, but ask him to look menacing and scary and he can scare off Darth Vader while dressed in a suit, carrying a piece of paper, smiling and talking about donuts. You just do not want to mess with this guy — unless your Jason Bourne that is.

Let me also say that the love of hand-held cameras and “misframed” shots is all fine and dandy when used well (hello “Firefly”), but when your audience is looking for barf bags, you might wish to tone it down a little. There were bits (especially early on the movie) where I felt like the cameraman needed to get back on the water wagon and at least attempt to find Damon in his shots. It didn’t as much feel like you were in the middle of things as it felt like you were dead drunk trying to catch a bit of something important that was going around you, and failing miserably in your attempts. It kinda felt like you couldn’t tell what was going on since the camera was looking at everything but the action.

Of course, things go boom and people (mostly men) try to hurt each other in new and fascinating ways.  This is mostly the good part about the movie, as well as some of the writing. There are times you just can’t help laughing. Also, the ending has value onto itself, the musical score at the end is perfect. Spot on delivery for the final installment of saga that is Bourne.

Cate Blanchett returns as the queen of all queens.  I have to admit I didn’t really expect overly much, don’t get me wrong though, Blanchett is a good actress, the material is strong (it’s an amazing period in western civilization), but the thing is, we know the story.  We know the details, we know the people.  The number of  books written about Elizabeth make a nice big stack, actually, they make a pretty nice library on their own.

However, like all stories, how it’s told matters.  And I’ll flatly admit this story is told very well.  Very very well. The acting is stunning.  Blanchett provides a larger emotional span than I expected, bringing Elizabeth both to life on the screen but also making her human, a believable mortal trying to lead her children through uncertain times.  Apart from Blanchetts work, Jordi Mollá does an amazing Philip, and of course, Clive Owen embodies Raleigh in a swashbuckling way that’s supposedly highly authentic and quite fascinating.  Geoffery Rush (Walsingham) also deserves mention, as does Abbie Cornish (Beth).  All in all the cast is good, very good indeed.

On the technical front, the movie is shot to produce emotional effects with great success.  Lighting and camera work is top notch for its purpose. Sometimes you can feel it go a bit over the top, but it’s usually in “theme” with the rest of the work, so it fits in well enough.  It’s been a while since I’ve been so gripped by a movie speech as Blanchetts delivery to the soldiers upon facing the armada.

I must say I was very happy that I caught the movie in theaters.  I doubt it’s a movie I’ll watch many times over, but it’s well worth seeing.

I actually saw this movie over the summer, so this is a bit of a delayed musing. However, “Ratatouille” is a movie that deserves mention. Pixar and Brad Bird have proved that they can deliver animated movies that aren’t “kids movies”, while still being loved by pretty much every age group out there. The stories are rather easy tales, but have a surprising amount of depth for the medium they’ve been embedded into. They recently delivered “The Incredibles” and we as an audience loved it. So, how do you top that? Easy, you make a rat want to become a chef…

From the onset you’d think, geeze, this is disturbing, disgusting and distasteful. And yet, somehow, it’s not only pulled off, but it’s done with a huge amount of success. The (voice) cast deserves more than honorable mention, but let’s face it, the animators deserve a medal for the work.  No, I’m not going to argue how technically brilliant the movie is (and trust me, it is), but rather let it be sufficient to say that you don’t catch yourself thinking of it as an animated movie.  It just transcends the format and comes alive like nothing else.

The opening sequences are stunning and set the stage for a fantastic journey of men and mice.  Bird grabs you by the collar and doesn’t let go until the final curtain, having you laugh, weep, smile, smirk and clap with joy as the story unfolds.   If you ever thought “it’s animated”, do yourself a favor, go see “Ratatouille”.  It’s been said before, but honestly, if you avoid “Ratatoullie”, you’re doing yourself a great injustice.  This is a movie to be experienced by everyone, small and big rats alike.

No, no points for the reference in question, but feel free to comment on it.

Anyway, I saw “Stardust” a second time. It’s funny really, this time around it was an even better movie. How so? Well, I was done comparing it to the book so I could just sit back and watch the movie. Which, incidentally, is a very good way to spend a few hours. First off, the music. I noticed it last time around, but this time it blew me away. It is extremely well done all the way through the movie. Yeah, I mentioned the cast last time around, yeah, they’re good, but dang. Everyone actually works, I love them even more the second time around — and to whomever who got De Niro to dance Cha-cha-cha in drag? Thanks! Well, except I might never watch “Raging Bull” or “Taxi Driver” the same way again…

It is funny how a second take on something gives you a different experience than the first one. Some select movies (“When Night is Falling”, “Brazil”, “Heat” and others) are movies I’ve seen many times over, but after tonight I’m contemplating if the second viewing is the magic one. I’ll just have to keep that in mind for movies that seem to warrant it — and probably some that don’t, just to make sure.

Good movie the first time around, great movie the second time around. It’s not the book made into a movie. It’s the concept of the book transferred into a different medium, and accepting that (which means even forgetting about the book as you see the movie) will grant you an even better experience.

So, “Stardust”. One of my favorite books becomes a movie. This could be bad — actually, this is usually bad. The novel is another of Gaimans masterpieces, a fable so well written one could mistake it from being a fairy tale from eons past, and then some. I loved the book when I read it. So yes, I was worried. There was so much magic, so many characters, so rich a world, so many details, how does a movie capture it faithfully?

Truth is, you don’t. You have to cut some corners. And to do that you have to understand the content. You have to realize what the story is about, how it works, why it works, and transfer those concepts onto the screen. There have been successful transfers like this (“Lord of the Rings” worked, “Sin City” was outstanding, to mention a few), but for every success there are probably a half-dozen failures. “Stardust” is solidly entrenched into the category of transfers that are successful. No ifs, no buts, no doubt. It works. It’s as magical as the book. And that, well, that is a feat.

Of course, the old saying that “the book was better” is true, in the sense that you’re comparing very different works.  I loved the book but I’ll readily admit to loving the movie as well.   Now, you don’t get as much Gaiman in the movie as you did in the book, for obvious reasons.  However, in the book, you don’t get De Niro in one of his best performances in years (“The Good Shepherd” aside), a Michelle Pfeiffer who’s rarely been better in recent memory, and Claire Danes who literally shines.   Actually, there isn’t a single weak link in the cast.  The smallest parts are played out exceedingly well, a rare experience in a picture, and yes, that means that the “lesser known” people do a fantastic job.

Is the book worth reading?  Yes.  Very much so.  Is the movie worth seeing?  Considering I’m getting myself a DVD, yeah, I’d say so.

Yarr, what do you do when you’ve been up for ~35 hours and you want to do something before bed?  You go see a movie.  Preferably a movie that manages to keep you awake.  I’ll give you this much, if you like Simpsons at all, you’ll stay awake for this one.  As far as cartoon-goes-to-the-big screen goes, it can’t get done much better.  They keep the people, the pace, the blend of humor and the entirety of their bravado, and they make it work for an hour and a half.  It’s quite a feat.

The storyline is as you’d gather Simpsonesque, we wobble a bit here and there as the family goes through less than good times, as per usual.  It starts of funny and keeps on going, there aren’t many moments between laughs, be it from slapstick, subdued jokes, internal references, personalities gone wrong, the whole nine yards — and this without feeling like a string of jokes or a repeated string of the same joke.  Well done!

Should you see it?  If you like the TV series, yeah, your really really should.  If you don’t like the TV series, I’m sure you and that other dude can meet up and do something the two of you.  The rest of us have a movie to watch.