Scheduling problems prevented us from having our gourmet club get-together in March, so we were all ready for some fine dining when April rolled around. This time we ate at Steve and Terri Howes’ place.
and for dessert…
We had an unusually high number of white wines with this gourmet meal which suited me just fine. Doug also brought and additional bottle of dessert wine in addition to the Late Harvest Zin. It may have been a Sautern, but it does not appear on the menu.
Here is what we saw:
| Title | Made | Saw | Rating |
| The Other Boleyn Girl | 2008 | 3/2/08 | 3 |
| Waitress | 2007 | 3/2/08 | 3 |
| Arctic Tale | 2007 | 3/4/08 | 3 |
| The Simpsons Movie | 2007 | 3/6/08 | 2 |
| Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day | 2008 | 3/8/08 | 3 |
| Poirot: Mystery of the Blue Train and Taken at the Flood | 2005 | 3/10/08 | 3 |
| The Kingdom | 2007 | 3/12/08 | 3 |
| Vantage Point | 2008 | 3/15/08 | 3 |
| The Brave One | 2007 | 3/18/08 | 3 |
| Gone Baby Gone | 2007 | 3/20/08 | 3 |
| Eastern Promises | 2007 | 3/21/08 | 3 |
| The President’s Analyst | 1967 | 3/28/08 | 3 |
| Sicko | 2007 | 3/30/08 | 3 |
The Boleyns are presented as social climbers and they use their daughters to further their cause. At first they try to interest the king in Anne, but when he is injured in a riding accident it is Mary who nurses him and catches his eye. She is newly married but what the heck. The king orders her to court. Her husband is assigned to duties in distant parts and she becomes the king’s mistress. Eventually she gets pregnant and bears him a son. In the mean time Anne arrives at court and catches the king’s fancy. She doesn’t succumb to his advances and talks Henry into breaking with the Roman Church. When they do finally marry, she has Elizabeth, another female heir, but miscarries all her male children. The king has to get rid of this wife too so a situation where Anne is made to look like she has had an incestuous relationship with her brother is concocted. Both are executed and Henry is now set for his next wife. He will go on to have 6 all told. Very few records exist from this time so only the broadest strokes of the story are documented. All the details are fabricated. Anne really was tried for the relationship with her brother, but also 5 other men which the move doesn’t mention. Some current thinking is that all of that is untrue. That Henry was only house cleaning. Some historians believe that Anne was her daughter’s equal. If she had produced the appropriate sons, she would have continued as queen and that she was as intelligent and strong willed as Elizabeth was to become. She may well have changed England’s history even more than she did. It is unclear whether Anne or Mary is the Other Boleyn Girl.
Theater – 3 stars
Jenna is stuck in a loveless marriage with a clueless brute of a husband. She must obey his every decree. She works in a pie restaurant where she is the star pie maker, inheriting many of her recipes from her mother, but creating many of her own. She unexpectedly and unhappily finds herself pregnant. When she goes to the doctor she is attracted to him and begins an affair. She starts squirreling money away around the house to be able to get away from her husband. When he finds it, there is hell to pay but she convinces him it was for the baby. The owner of the cafe is a crusty old guy and none of the other waitresses will wait on him so Jenna is always his server. He takes a shine to her because of their honest interactions. She tells him her woes and he says that one can always make a fresh start. She can’t see how with a job that pays nothing and a baby on the way. She is resigned to her fate. [SPOILER] When she goes in to the hospital to have the baby, the old guy goes in for surgery too. He dies and leaves her enough money to buy the cafe. She tells her husband she doesn’t love him and hasn’t for years. She breaks off the affair with the doctor and lives happily ever after.
Netflix – 3 stars
A baby polar bear and a baby walrus are born about the same time. The stories of their lives run parallel with each other, but eventually they meet. I figured the polar bear would eat the walrus but that doesn’t happen. Both species are stressed by the changing arctic climate however. When you find out that the movie was made by the same people that made An Inconvenient Truth, their heavy handed preaching jumps out at you. In fact, after thinking about the film for a while, you realize the whole purpose of the movie was the preaching and it is only thinly covered by the nature documentary. I’m as much against global warming as the next person but this struck me as being a little dishonest. I’ve often wondered about the storylines of nature documentaries. One thinks that the film crews either set out to capture certain behaviors or they follow a particular subject. But in this film I think they got a bunch of footage and prepared a fictionalized account out of what they got. You could tell what was going to happen to the main polar bear’s brother from the instant he was introduced. The mother bear had a name, the female cub had a name, all the walruses had names, but the male cub never got one. You knew that sucker was going to bite the dust (snow). If it weren’t for some wonderful shots, I might have given this one a 2.
Netflix – 3 stars
Homer dumps a silo full of pig manure into Lake Springfield and causes an environmental crisis. In response, the EPA puts a gigantic dome over Springfield and doesn’t let anyone in or out. The Simpsons escape through a sink hole and move to Alaska. Knowing someone escaped, let alone it being Homer, the EPA decides to remedy the situation by creating a new Grand Canyon by blowing the whole place up. The Simpsons return home to save the day. Hooray! I never was a big fan of the Simpsons but I always thought they were kinda funny. And there are some funny parts to this show. An unexpected turn of phrase, outrageous behavior, and some wonderful little gags going on in the background that have nothing to do with the foreground action. But they only amounted to about 2% of the movie and the rest of it was pretty boring. Sorry Simpson fans, this one didn’t cut it.
Netflix – 2 stars
Set in the 1930’s, Miss Pettigrew is a down-on-her-luck nanny, the nanny of last resort. While in the employment agency getting the latest and final bad news, she palms a business card and applies for a job as a social secretary to a scatter brained young actress. When she arrives, all hell is breaking loose so she takes matters in hand and saves the day. The actress likes her immediately and they spend the rest of the day in various adventures. By midnight they have solved the problems and love has found a way. This was a sweet movie.
Theater – 3 stars
Poirot mysteries start to look pretty much the same after a while. There is not much point describing the plots of these two. They are intricate as all Christie plots are. All in all the production values of this series are great. Nothing is different with that here. What is different is that these two are from about season 10. David Suchet looks 10 years older and Hastings, Miss Lemon, and Japp are gone. I don’t know if they are written out in the books too or if there were just casting difficulties. One nice touch, in the Mystery of the Blue Train the sweet young thing asks Poirot if he has ever been on the Orient Express. He says he hasn’t but will have to do so soon.
Netflix – 3 stars
Terrorists shoot up an American residential compound in Saudi Arabia, killing many, many innocent people. The FBI wants to go in and conduct the investigation but both our state department and the Saudis are against it. The team goes anyway but is hamstrung with red tape. The Saudi official assigned to the unit seems to be there more to keep them out of trouble than to help. His heart is in the right place however. As the investigation proceeds, the team itself becomes the target of the terrorists and there is a knock-down, shoot-em-up ending.
Netflix – 3 stars
We saw this movie when we were in Milwaukee. Karen’s sister Sue picked it out. We had never heard of it before we went. In the movie, the President is in Salamanca, Spain, attending an international counter terrorist conference. There is an assassination attempt. The event unfolds through the lens of the television coverage and the backstage news production. The basic elements of the story are defined. A few minutes later the story is rewound and we see it from the point of view of one of the participants. He is aware of things the news coverage isn’t so a little more clarity is added. This approach goes on till we have seen the story from about 8 different points of view. Each time, the situation becomes clearer and clearer. Lots of action and excitement. I found myself sitting in my chair twisting my hands into knots.
Theater – 3 stars
This is the Jody Foster vengeance movie and does she do it. She and her fiance are mugged in Central Park. She is raped and seriously injurred and the man is killed. The bad guys even steal her dog. She is fearful and buys a gun, illegally because the waiting period is too long to get one properly and she thinks she will be killed in the mean time. While in a quick shop, a man comes in and kills the clerk, his exwife. When Foster’s cell phone rings he starts searching the aisles looking for her, intent on killing her. In self defense she shoots him through the liquor bottles then takes the surveillance tape as she is leaving. Next, she is on the subway and two young toughs threaten her with a nasty looking knife. She never hesitates and shoots them where they stand. Ballistics match the bullets in the two killings and the police think they have a vigilante on their hands. The detective begins to suspect the Foster character. When a clue to her muggers comes along, she follows it up and locates them. Going to where they live we have the final show down. There is a little surprise at the end.
Netflix – 3 stars
A little girl is abducted. The mother is a coke head and ne’er-do-well. The aunt hires our heroes to assist the police in their investigations, thinking their local, personal contacts might lead to information the police might not be able to get otherwise. And such is the case. When the cause of the abduction is figured out, they make arrangements for a pay off, but the deal goes wrong and they lose the little girl. There are consequences for those involved. The movie goes on. One of the original leads pays off several months later and some suspects of interest in the little girl’s case surface. They have taken a 7 year old boy. They have been raping and torturing him and by the time our heroes come to have a look, he has died in an “accident”. All through this, our heroes and the official police investigators have been getting along pretty well and even start to bond a little. But something isn’t right. Comments are made that don’t add up. Lies are told. Our hero figures out the answer but pays a price for what he thinks is right. Casey Affleck plays the PI and he as so many marbles in his mouth he doesn’t utter one intelligable line. We had to turn on the subtitles to understand what he is saying. That aside, the movie still is pretty good.
Netflix – 3 stars
We seem to be having a string of violent movies lately. This one opens with a pregnant young woman collapsing in a drug store. She dies in the hospital giving birth. The hospital midwife finds the girl’s diary in her belongings and takes it hoping to locate the next of kin. The girl was Russian so the midwife can’t read the diary. Her late father was Russian so she asks her uncle to translate it. He is shocked by the contents and refuses to translate it. She takes it to someone else who turns out to be the very villain named in the diary (of course). They want to get the diary back because it incriminates them. The girl wants to see justice done. Between her and them is the driver for the Russian gangster who likes the girl but must perform his “duties”. He walks a dangerous line and has an agenda of his own. There is a clever twist at the end.
Netflix – 3 stars
So many times when you get an old movie like this, that you fondly remember, it turns out to be really bad. Not the case here though. James Coburn plays an analyst that the President asks for specifically. The more he meets with the President, the more paranoid the analylist becomes. And rightly so. Everyone wants to kidnap him to find out the presidential secrets. All except the FBR and its director, Mr Lux. They want to flat out murder him. When the analyst makes a run for it, they are all after him. One of the great scenes is when he is out to eat with a suburban Washington DC couple who are unwittingly helping him in his escape. The agents try to grab him and are mistaken for muggers. The ultimate villain in the movie is not who you would expect and when you discover who it is, it’s pretty funny.
Netflix – 3 stars
This is Michael Moore’s latest documentary. It’s about the medical/insurance industry in this country and how bad it is. He features various people who have nightmare stories about their dealings with the industry. 911 workers who can’t get care despite all the hard work they put in at ground zero. After rolling out a number of tales, Moore visits Canada, France, and England, all countries with national health care. When he finds out that the prisoners at the Guantanamo Prison have free four-star health care, he takes the 911 workers there. They are run off but he stops in Cuba and they are all treated for free and they are all treated as heros.
Netflix – 3 stars
A year or so ago our waterbed heater gave out on us and we had to get a new one. That’s pretty standard stuff in the waterbed world. After we replaced it we were refilling the mattress and the hose came out of the valve and started filling up the liner with water. Ack! We rushed around and fixed it but ended up having to get a new liner, and then a replacement for that one since the first one was defective. Things settled back down and everything was normal again till last week.
Last Wednesday or Thursday Karen was tucking the sheet in as she was getting into bed for the night and remarked that the edge of the sheet felt a little damp. When we got up in the morning the same thing happened to me so we figured we better drain the bed and find the problem. After it was empty we noticed from the date we wrote on the label that the mattress was over 12 years old. It had done its job valiantly for over a decade and deserved retirement. On Friday I ordered a new one on the internet. It seems no one stocks waterbed mattresses in Cedar Rapids anymore. The customer rep said she would try to have it shipped out that day and she was as good as her word. The new mattress arrived on Tuesday.
We were happy to get it because none of the other beds in the house let the two of us stretch out like we can in the waterbed. Karen was on an air mattress in the waterbed frame and I was on the bed in the spare bedroom.
When Karen got home from work we started filling the bed and it was full in about 20 minutes. Despite the fact that we had emptied one whole water heater’s worth of hot water into it, it was too cold to sleep on directly. Karen put about 5 blankets on it and decked out in our sweat clothes we retired for the evening. About 1:00 am something happened and we found ourselves laying in a pool of cold water. Yikes! This was a full mattress and it was leaking over the top. The carpet was soaked in spots and later we noticed that it must have gone through the floor and was dripping out the light fixture in my office in the basement. I grabbed the hose, threw it out the window and started draining off the water. It took much longer to drain than it did to fill. When it was down to a containable level, we left it for the morning and reoccupied our temporary beds.
Reviewing the situation we discovered that the heater must have melted the liner to the bottom of the mattress and I must have pressed the top surface down on that spot too so all three layers were melted together. When I rolled over, it must have torn the top surface open. This is really bad. It’s a wonder the heater didn’t short out and electricute the two of us.
Karen is off to work this morning and I need to finish off the clean up. I’ll update you if there are any other interesting developments. The jury is out on what we are going to do about the whole situation. Who knows? We may have a regular bed for the first time in 35 years.
We had an action packed time this last weekend. It’s Karen’s spring break and we went to visit her sister Sue in Racine, Wisconsin. The day we arrived, Saturday, we went to see a movie, Vantage Point, which I will be commenting on in next month’s movie reviews. Sunday we went to Sue’s roommate Patti’s church for a performance of an Easter Cantata. Patti is in the choir and afterwards we went out to brunch. We could have ordered some fancy entres but most of us were so stuffed that we couldn’t even think of it. In the evenings we played Mah Jongg. We haven’t played for quite some time so that was kind of a treat. I don’t think I won even one hand in all the games we played.
The highlight of this little adventure was our trip to Milwaukee on Monday. We went to see Body Worlds at the Milwaukee Public Museum. In 1977 a doctor, Gunther von Hagens, invented a process he calls plastination. He processes cadavers and preserves them by filling them with resins and elastomers. He developed the process primarily as a teaching tool for anatomy students but he soon discovered that the general public was just as fascinated as professional collegues.
Mostly he removes the skin from the body and poses it to reveal the muscular structures. But he also does much more. I expected the show to be mostly entertainment, seeing the bodies posed to play football or on the rings or playing chess, which was all there. But the exhibit was mostly a teaching tool. The entire digestive tract was removed and laid out for you to see all its parts. Or you could see cross sections of the brain. Or you could see all the major blood vessels.
It was a great learning experience. We rented the commentary devices. You punch in a number at each exhibit and it tells you what you are looking at. I would highly recommend doing that if you ever get to see one of these shows. One of the most interesting but most controversial parts was the section dealing with pregnancy and fetal development. Enough people found it objectionable that they put it in a separate room.
Here is the next round of photos from family and friends.
Hierstein Family 2008
Front row: Sagen Michaud & Kadin Connor. Middle: Judy and Bill Hierstein. Back row: Lorelei and Jessica Michaud, Bucky and Emily Connor-Sparkle, Brian Michaud
I tried real hard to make sure these names were right, but I probably goofed them up some how. If I did, let me know and I’ll correct them.
and here are the Knudsens…
Back: Knudsens: Willie, Curt, Dan, and Zach
Front: Linda and sister, Diane Spicer
That’s all I have now. Send me pictures the rest of you.
We had our second Gourmet Club dinner of the season Saturday night at Doug and Lynne’s. Lynne felt that taking pictures of the courses just before they were served made things too hectic and frustrating and she asked me not to bring my camera. So, you will just have to imagine what their offerings looked like from seeing the menu below.
Here is what we saw:
| Title | Made | Saw | Rating |
| Paris, Je T’aime | 2007 | 2/7/08 | 3 |
| Knocked Up | 2007 | 2/12/08 | 3 |
| Avenue Montaigne | 2007 | 2/14/08 | 3 |
| Amazing Grace | 2006 | 2/17/08 | 3 |
| Spiderwick Chronicles | 2008 | 2/18/08 | 3 |
| Across the Universe | 2006 | 2/27/08 | 3 |
This is a collection of 20 short film segments. All are about 5 minutes long, all are set in Paris and all have love as a theme, one way or another. Most are not too memorable, but there were 3 that deserve special mention. The first, I’m embarrassed to admit, involved mimes. Mimes are one of my all time hated things, especially those dressed like Marcel Marceau. However, this segment makes fun of the mimes so it is sort of ok. The ending is great. The second features Nick Nolte. Clever scripting completely fools you about what is actually going on and the surprise ending of this one is great too. The last one features Elijah Wood and is an homage of his part in Sin City. It involves his encounter with a beautiful vampiress.
Netflix – 3 stars
An attractive career women and her older sister go to a club and meet a stoner. The career woman has a one night fling and ends up pregnant. Rather than abandoning the girl, the stoner rises to the occasion and the rest of the movie is about how they try to make things work through the course of the pregnancy. There are a couple of predictable, obligatory, and extremely tedious sequences, but the rest is ok, at times touching and sometimes even funny. There is one pretty good scene where the sisters go back to the club where the trouble all started, but the one is 8 months pregnant and the other is starting to show her age a little. Where once they were let in immediatley, they are now denied admission. The older sister reads the doorman the riot act and belittles him as being “just a doorman”. You think he is going to clobber her, but he takes her aside, agrees with her and in a heartfelt speech makes her feel like a heel. The outcome of the movie is happy as you would predict.
Netflix – 3 stars
Jessica, a girl from a small village comes to Paris and gets a job as a waitress across the street from a multistage theatrical complex. Three plots are due to collide in a couple of day’s time when there will be a piano concert, a play, and an art sale in the theater. Each of these events has a central character; the pianist wants out of the constant grind of concert performances, the actress is a successful television soap opera star but wants to be in the movies, and a self-made millionaire who’s dying of cancer is selling the art collection he has taken a lifetime to put together. Jessica is the glue that binds all these intertwining stories together along with a couple of smaller ones. The plot is a little predictable but it’s a sweet story. Subtitles.
Netflix – 3 stars
The story of William Wilburforce’s long hard battle to end the slave trade in England. Beginning before the American Revolution he is almost there but suffers a setback when the colonies rebel because talk of ending slavery at that time is almost considered sedition. After the war he has another try and eventually succeeds by using a seemingly otherwise “harmless” law to confiscate slave ships. The movie does not explain why England is in the slave trade but does not have slavery itself. Nice historical drama.
Netflix – 3 stars
Rachel and I saw this on a snow day when her school was closed. It reminded me a lot of Bridge to Terabithia. The goblins weren’t as visually frightening as they could have been, but their relentless pursuit and evil intent were pretty bad. The shape changing ogre could look horrible at times. Basically, the story is about a broken family that comes to live in the remote ancestral home. The mother is newly divorced and the kids resent leaving their friends in the city. One of the twin sons is particularly rebellious. He finds a disused dumb waiter and takes it to his ancestor’s secret study. There he finds a book that says not to open it. So of course he does. It releases all the supernatural creatures in the neighborhood. The ogre will stop at nothing to get the book and its secrets. With it he can destroy all the other fairies, pixies, goblins, etc and become the master of the world. The kids try to destroy the book but only the owner can do it so they go on a quest to find him. What do you think? Does the story end happily?
Theater – 3 stars
Jude works in a shipyard in Liverpool and comes to America to find his father, a WWII GI who was unaware of Jude’s existance. He meets Lucy and her brother Maxwell and they move into an apartment with a whole cast of other free spirits. Set in the 1960’s, this is the story of some characters that have names that occur in various Beatles songs. All of them are fictitious but have some resemblence to real life people. The two main characters are Jude and Lucy, but there are also Maxwell, Prudence, Sadie etc. They are NOT the people actually featured in the songs. Various songs are arranged to keep the storyline going. Sometimes it is a later tune, then an early one, etc. It is quite skillfully put together. The first 20 minutes when the characters are being introduced and when you are figuring out how the whole song/plot mechanism works is a little slow, but after you have got it, the movie steps right along and is kinda fun.
Netflix – 3 stars
We like to have our grandkids visit us on the weekends and since it’s been a while, we invited Rachel to stay with us this last weekend. We picked her up late Saturday morning and went to one of her favorite places to eat, the Pizza Ranch. It’s just a few blocks from her house. She likes to get the fried chicken and a couple kinds of dessert pizza with lemonade on the side.
When we got to Cedar Rapids we stopped at the Blue Stone rock shop. There are all kinds of great rocks to look at; crystals, minerals, fossils, and rock-based jewelry. They have a section of geodes that have not been broken. You can pick one, take it home, and break it open. It may or may not be good. All of the ones they offered are about the same, that is, somewhere between a golf ball and a tennis ball in size. If they are heavy which means they are fairly solid, they cost $1.00 Lighter ones which means they have a better chance of being what you want are $2.00. We got one of the $2.00 ones.
I asked the saleslady if I could break it open myself and she thought I probably could. She told me how to do it and we came home. I went out to the shop and got my welding hammer which you will see in the pictures. The geode was slightly flattened and I ask which way was the best to try and break it and her answer seemed contraintuative to me but, oh well, she should know.
I started tapping the rock.
After tapping all the way around the rock 4 or 5 times I saw a crack starting to form. Funny thing is though, it split the way I thought it should have in the first place, not the way she said to do it.
Rachel is about ready to lose her two top front teeth. When she lost the bottom ones the second teeth came in behind the baby teeth which eventually did fall out. On the top, the roots of the baby teeth have dissolved on the back side but not on the front. The second teeth are coming in and forcing the backs down but the fronts are staying put. Right now the teeth are about 45 degrees off vertical. It’s so darned cute you can hardly stand it. She says, “It’s hard to eat this apple.”
She also told us that the art teacher at her school was showing them some paintings and one of them was The Yellow Cow” by Franz Marc. She said, “My grandma has that painting.” So here is Rachel in a picture with it so she can show her teacher.
On the news last night they said that we were in for a great big snow storm and they weren’t lying. Karen’s school district is a rural one and they often miss school if the roads are bad. They don’t want to chance anyone getting hurt by a school bus sliding off the road. They had a snow day on Monday and an even worse one today. By 2:00pm today we had an accumulation of a foot of snow in the last 24 hours. That gets us pretty close to an all time high for snowfall in any one year and it’s only the beginning of February. Karen usually goes in to work even if the kids don’t, but not today. I don’t think we could even get out our driveway. The treacherous conditions were, however, just beautiful. We have a winter wonderland. Even the smallest branches can have an accumulation of 3 or 4 inches of snow. Sometimes it’s hard to judge the scale in the photos, but they will give you an idea.
It was so pretty we wanted to go outside. And, we got a few things done. I took some 3D pictures for my photo exchange.
And Karen did a little shoveling before she came to her senses. I reminded her that the snowfall hadn’t ended yet and that we did have a snow blower. So she didn’t have any problem putting the shovel down.
We also got the bird feeders filled for the first time in a couple of weeks.
We saw a lot of movies this month. Here is what we saw:
| Title | Made | Saw | Rating |
| The Golden Compass | 2007 | 1/1/08 | 3 |
| Art in the 21st Century | 2004 | 1/8/08 | 3 |
| Bridge to Terabithia | 1985, 2007 | 1/8/08 | 3 |
| Seducing Doctor Lewis | 2003 | 1/10/08 | 3 |
| National Treasure: Book of Secrets | 2007 | 1/11/08 | 3 |
| Twilight Samurai | 2002 | 1/12/08 | 4 |
| The Astronaut Farmer | 2006 | 1/15/08 | 3 |
| Zodiac | 2007 | 1/17/08 | 3 |
| Perfume: The Story of a Murderer | 2006 | 1/18/08 | 3 |
| Hot Fuzz | 2007 | 1/23/08 | 3 |
| Pathfinder | 2006 | 1/24/08 | 2 |
| 300 | 2007 | 1/27/08 | 2 |
| Wild Hogs | 2007 | 1/30/08 | 3 |
| The Lookout | 2007 | 1/31/08 | 3 |
Set in an alternate reality, Lyra is a tomboy living in the sheltered environment of Jordon College, Oxford. People in this world have souls that walk beside them as animal totems. A mysterious woman wants to take Lyra to the north with her. Lyra wants to go because she wants to find her uncle who has disappeared there. Before she leaves, the head of the college gives her a gift, a Alethiometer or golden compass, a device for showing the holder the underlying truth of a situation. Lyra is the only one who can make it work making her something special. I love this stuff. The bad guys, the Magisterium are after the compass and almost get it a couple of times. Lyra has many adventures; at the Magisterium’s secret research facility, in a far north frontier town, on the open ice, and in the hall of the polar bear warriors. Debts must be settled and justice done and there is a big showdown back at the research facility. The look of the movie is top notch. The technology is futuristic Victorian. I would have given this movie a 4 except for a slightly dissatisfying ending.
Theater – 3 stars
These shows aired on public television. The DVD contains the first 4 shows of season one. Each show features the works of 4 artists for a grand total of 16 artists. With that many artists you are sure to like some and dislike some. All in all I liked most of them. For a sculptor, watching shows like these is a bit like reading a professional journal. Not only do you get to see a wide variety of work, but the artists talk about those works while you are looking at them and give you some of their artistic philosophy as well. Most of the artists were pretty weird. Weirder than I think I am myself. I’m sure someone will be correcting me on that score in the comments.
Netflix – 3 stars
[Spoiler alert, if you plan to see this movie, stop here] Two lonely, semi-outcast young teens become fast friends. The girl has tremendous writing talent and the boy is a skilled artist. But they are picked on at school and create a make-believe land called Terabithia across the creek from where they live. The theatrical version has scenes of them interacting with the animated inhabitants where the Wonderworks version just shows the actors pretending. The teacher at their school takes an interest in the boy’s art and takes him on a field trip to an art museum. While he is gone with her, the girl goes to Terabithia and falls in the rain swollen stream and drowns.
When this movie was in the theaters and I had just put it on my Netflix queue, I discovered that it had been made for TV’s Wonderworks in 1985. Like Beowulf, I thought comparing them would be interesting. Both versions had storylines that matched each other almost perfectly. The theatrical version was better because of a bigger budget and the magical performance of AnnaSophia Robb. Through CG animation it included the magical characters that inhabited Terabithia. I thought that the kids’ imaginations and the magic land they created was going to be the point of the movie. But wham, the grief the death causes is the real point. We got the first version, the theatrical one, at Christmas time when Wendy was home. She said she read it in junior high and remembers laying in bed sobbing and sobbing. I can see why.
Netflix – 3 stars each, maybe 4
The mayor of a small village in Quebec runs off to the big city to get a job as a highway patrolman. He was overwhelmed by the job of trying to find a doctor for this small fishing village of 120. The fishing industry is dead there and everyone is on the dole, a demoralizing situation for them. A doctor is one of the requirements of a company that wants to open a factory in the village so the hunt is on. Our hero, Germain, takes over where the former mayor left off and sends a xeroxed advertisement to every doctor in Quebec. No one is interested until the former mayor busts a doctor speeding home from a cricket match and offers to let him off if he will be the village’s doctor for a month. The doctor accepts. In that month the villagers will have to seduce him into staying on. Most of the movie centers around what they do to make that happen. This is a small movie, shot in Quebec in French with subtitles. The characters are endearing, there are no villains, and their schemes are rediculous. From the beginning there is no chance that the doctor won’t eventually accept. Of course there are some complications right up till the final minute but that’s to be expected.
Netflix – 3 stars
This time our heroes are in search of Cibola, the City of Gold. They are in a race with the bad guy who appears to be nasty and is, but who is not so bad by the end. There are a couple of unsatisfying, dizzying car chases, and “breakins” at the Paris Statue of Liberty, Buckingham Palace, the White House, Mount Vernon, the Library of Congress and Mount Rushmore. It’s reassuring that security at any of these places is so easily breached. There is also the mystery of the “Book of Secrets”, a book that compiles the writings of Presidents only for future Presidents. Of course our heroes get a look at it and not only does it give them the next clue but the stage is set for National Treasure 3 with unclarified references to the mysterious events described on page 47. The whole plot is completely preposterous but everyone dreams of finding a fabulous treasure and the movie gives you that in spades. The producers make no apologies for how outrageous the whole business is and it’s a fun ride.
Theater – 3 stars
Set in Japan in about 1870 the movie opens with the funeral of our hero’s wife. She was from a social station a couple of rungs above him so an appropriate funeral practically bankrupts him. He is left with two young daughters and a senile mother to support. He has to sell his sword and do piecework making cricket cages to make ends meet. He lets himself go, wearing tattered clothes and neglecting his personal hygiene and gets called to task for it at work. His best friend tells him that he has petitioned the court to grant a divorce for his sister who is married to a drunken lout who beats her. The sister is our hero’s childhood sweetheart. When the lout comes to the friend’s house to make trouble and challenge the friend to a duel, our hero offers to fight in his place. Showing up at the duel with only a wooden club (because he has no sword) he handily beats the lout who is an expert swordsman. This brings him a certain notoriety and the top warrior in the town stops by and asks our hero if he would like to have a friendly match. Our hero declines. When the emperor dies there is a lot of political intrigue with the top warrior chosing the wrong side. He is told to commit suicide, but refuses. He dispatches everyone who is sent to get him. So finally our hero is ordered to go in and kill him. The big battle is the climax of the movie. This is a samurai movie but the swordplay and daring-do are only secondary. Mostly it is about this modest man’s everyday life and the problems he faces. The look of the picture is great and I loved the architecture which I assume is authentic for the time. I didn’t really mind the subtitles which I usually object to.
Netflix – 4 stars
An Aeronautical Engineer quits the space program to help his family when his father commits suicide. All through his life he regrets that decision and has to face the fact that he will never be in space. He has designed a rocket and for years he has been putting it together bit by bit. But it’s taking its toll. He is deeply in debt and when he makes enquiries about high grade rocket fuel he comes to the attention of any number of government officials. They are out to stop him from launching the rocket. In a desparate attempt to get into orbit he tries a different fuel mixture to disasterous results. While recovering, his father-in-law dies leaving his daughter a substantial inheritance. The farm is saved and he begins again. Do you think he makes it into space? Here is a man living his dream. He is deeply committed to the point where he is just on the edge of being obsessed. In fact, some of the film’s characters believe he may have crossed that line, neglecting and maybe even endangering his family. But, this is one of those movies that makes you feel good all over.
Netflix – 3 stars
This movie is about the investigations into the Zodiac killings in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 60’s and early 70’s. It is not about the killings themselves although a couple are fairly graphically represented. There is the official investigation conducted by the law enforcement agencies in various jurisdictions and the unofficial investigation by members of the San Francisco Chronicle. The main reporter leaves the scene fairly early and the crusade is taken up by a cartoonist as the case starts to get cold. He has pretty good investigative and cryptography skills. The cases were never solved. Just about as they were ready to make an arrest, the prime suspect died of a heart attack so he was never convicted. San Francisco closed the case but it is still open in several of the surrounding jurisdictions. This is a long movie, 2 hrs and 38 mins, but is does not seem to drag at all
Netflix – 3 stars
Set in France in the 1700’s a boy is orphaned at birth and sent to an orphange. He has a remarkable gift, an extremely acute sense of smell. As a teen he is sold to a leather tanner, a hard life but rich in scents to be sure. It is limiting however. One day he makes a delivery to a perfumier. His whole world changes. He demonstrates his abilities to the perfumier and asks that he buy him out of servitude and teach him the trade. The perfumier does this and has great success because of this young man’s abilities. At one point the boy accidentally kills a young woman and is obsessed by her fragrance. This is the smell of her actual body. When he learns as much as he can, he asks if there are other ways to get frangrances. This leads him on a quest to a distant city. He learns the other method and tries to use it to obtain the essense of a young woman that he murders. This is a success and leads to a series of murders with him extracting the aromas of the young women. This sends the town into a panic and after the final murder he is captured and sentenced to death. The ending of the movie is preposterous however. And the movie is over long but it has a good look to it.
Netflix – 3 stars
A crackerjack English police officer is reassigned to a small village because his success is making everyone else look bad. After he arrives a strange series of “accidents” starts to happen. His partner, the son of the police chief, is inept but a good buddy. In a drunken bonding session one night he introduces the London cop to grade B police movies. The accidents really turn out to be murders as our hero suspects but who commits them is the point of the movie. And a rediculous one at that. The finale has an over the top shoot out that is supposed to be a satire of the previously mentioned B movies, but really isn’t all that funny. This movie gets a 3, but a very low one
Netflix – 3 stars
A viking boy who is on a raiding party to North America gets left behind. He is raised by the very Indians the vikings have been raiding. Fifteen years later the vikings are back and our hero helps the Indians fight against them. As you might expect, the vikings are eventually defeated. This was a bad movie. The vikings are something out of Frank Frezetta rather than anything realistic. They have only one aim and that is to kill as many Indians as possible. Why? There is no booty, they don’t make them slaves. What is the point? The cinematography is very dark, making it almost impossible to see what is going on. It is filmed in winter but there is always a mist to obscure the action. They arrive on the coast, but within minutes they are in Alpine country, thousands of feet above sea level. Is Labrador like that? The viking lad somehow becomes an expert swordsman and horseman as he grows up and he can speak fluent vikingese even after 15 years. P U.
Netflix – 2 stars
The king of Sparta, Leonidis, takes 300 men to defend the kingdom against the invading Persians. He does so against the oracle that says he will lose and the national council’s will. He strategically places his men at Thermopylae, a narrow gorge that limits the number of Persians that can be brought to bear at any one time. The 300 are eventually defeated but I guess they saved the day. The movie does not explain why Xerxes didn’t simply go on to take Sparta and in the end we see thousands of Spartans prepared for battle but we don’t really know what happens next. I disliked this film. It was based on a graphic novel, read comic book, and it had the storyline and dialog to prove it. It was done in the style of Sin City or the newest Beowulf, animation over the top of live action but it looked more like live action to me. The point of this movie was the blood spattered battle scenes with any number of decapitations and limbs flying off into the wings. Ugh.
Netflix – 2 stars
Four socially disfunctional middle aged men decide they need to take their Harleys on a road trip from Cincinati to LA. Along the way they have stupid adventures till they get to New Mexico where they have the misfortune to run into the infamous Del Fuegos motorcycle gang and get on their bad side. Cornered in a small town they make a stand for what’s right and just barely get by. The activitity in the closing credits is one of the best parts. Mostly stupid, this movie does have occasional funny parts which didn’t happen as frequently as I would have liked. There’s a nice little surprise at the end. Then the credits. Low 3.
Netflix – 3 stars
A high school sports hero is showing off for his friends and girl in his convertible on a summer night and gets into a crash. Flash forward. He is now in rehab after a serious head injury having to write down everything just to remember what to do next. In a bar a friend of his older sister recognizes him and strikes up a friendship. The “friend” is just setting up our hero to be a lookout for a robbery at a bank where our hero works. They commit the robbery but things go wrong. Surprise, surprise. This movie started out pretty slow and built in anxiety all the way through. You know nothing good is going to happen to this poor guy.
Netflix – 3 stars
