Not long for this world
This blog is going to be retired soon. My new one is called Anecdotes & Evidence, focused on critical analysis of the news media, but probably filled with additional silly stuff.
9.27.2007
9.16.2007
San Francisco - A Made-Up History in Pictures
Microclimates. It's all about getting used to the microclimates. You go to San Francisco expecting a giant earthquake, but you get a stiff rain from a clear blue (but somehow still foggy) sky while the temperature oscillates between 60 and 80 degrees with the frequency of a dribbled basketball. And that's just walking from the airport to the taxi stand.
It was with this in mind as I put on my shorts, t-shirt, and sweater, while wadding a leather jacket into a ball and shoving it into a bright pink backpack. That last item wasn't really by design, but in a town like San Francisco, it makes a guy look like a native. It worked, too -- I had people asking me directions. So equipped, I headed into the sunny drizzle to find a bus to the Golden Gate Bridge.
Note the fog bank obscuring the top of the bridge. Now look carefully in the distance at the blue sky over Sausalito. This view represents two of the five weather conditions visible from this vantage point.
I'd come this far. What else to do but walk across?
This is a picture of where I had been standing when I took the previous picture. I am now approximately 1/20th of the way across this longer-than-it-looks bridge.
This is a view back towards the city. Note the tip of the TransAmerica building disappearing into the clouds.
Here are a couple of shots while walking towards Sausolito.
You can see the top of the bridge coming out of the clouds, right? That's more of those microclimates. They are kind of extreme in those parts. At about the time I was taking this picture, the southbound side of the bridge was experiencing a mild sirocco.
When you start in San Francisco and start walking across this bridge, you almost always end up on the north side of the bay, in Sausalito. I say "almost" because you have the option of turning around and walking back. Or, failing that, there is another option which only occurs to those in a certain frame of mind.
Honestly, when I came up on this emergency phone, it took me a moment to realize what it implied.
Fatal AND tragic. That's pretty bad. That must be depressing for people who live in Sausalito. "Give me the north bay or give me death! Hmmm... AIEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeee......*splash*"
Sausalito has a rich history, rivalling that of San Francisco itself. First of all, it's home to B. J. Hunnicutt from M*A*S*H. The city's most famous citizen is a Korean War-era surgeon with the added feature of being fictional.
But beyond that, the place has fascinating stories from when it was owned by Spain. The city's name, sausalito, is a Spanish term meaning I'd like just a little bit of sauce. As you will all recall, in the 1840s when San Francisco was filled with gold prospectors and the area across the bay was covered in Spaniards, the two normally amicable groups argued over recipies. This led to The Gravy Rebellion of 1848, which cost a lot of lives and frankly made a hell of a mess. Eventually, the warring parties hammered out the Salsa Accords, allowing each group to decide the amount of sauce normally put on the food. Sausalito was so named as a reminder that when you're on their side of the bay, you aren't getting as much sauce as you probably want. There was some thought to renaming the opposite side Sausalotto, but that was defeated by close vote. Everyone had already become used to saying things like "San Fran" and "Frisco."
Ironically, the only Spanish restaurant you can find in Sausalito these days is an El Pollo Loco, which puts the salsa in a little cup on the side.
Anyhow, I most definitely demonstrated my mad skills at pedestrianing. Or is it pedestrianating? Pedophilia? Um, let's call it walking. But just in case there were any doubters, I had to walk back. I left my hotel room on the other side.
I almost forgot the most famous place in the bay. Alcatraz.
No one lives there now, but there is a small faction of fed-up citizens begging to drop Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Karl Rove in there with no supervision. (This was Rove's idea.) There is a much larger faction that wants to mount cameras in there too. That'll knock American Idol off the top of the charts.
Eventually, I got back across and ate my traditional Welcome Home Gravy Vat. By then, the microclimate effects had burned themselves out, and the day turned amazing. The TransAmerica building was no longer hiding in the clouds.
That's pretty much it for my pictoral tour of San Francisco! After all that, I never made it to Fisherman's Wharf. But I did go to Burma Superstar, which was at least as good, followed by a trip to Mitchell's Ice Cream. And a short tour of The Castro, which was a cool place, and my pink backpack was a huge hit.
I will be fielding suggestions for my next visit, which might be later this year. I think I'll try the sauce.
9.15.2007
9.11.2007
9.10.2007
9.05.2007
9.02.2007
9.14.2006
Tour de Atlantic
Note: It took me time to get net connectivity, so I am posting all these close together, as I have time. This is the one I wrote on the plane before my battery started to die.
Occasionally, a man has to ride a bike. And sometimes he has to start pedaling in Atlanta on a Saturday morning only to find himself in Madrid on Tuesday morning. Make sure your tires are inflated to 45,000 psi, and be sure you hit your top speed coming into Charleston, SC. About 6500 mph should do it, so you stop for lunch. You'll need thin tires too -- I'd recommend the width of four carbon molecules put together. Your friction will be low, and you'll be able to bisect any squirrels that jump in front of you. (That is, you won't have much friction on the road, but you will get a good deal of air friction from the wind. So wear that helmet! And maybe some sort of ointment to help your skin regro--... Sorry.)
There was a plane in there somewhere.
The bike thing was a MS 150 Challenge near Calloway Gardens in Atlanta. It's a to-day, 150-mile bike tour to raise money for multiple sclerosis. Basically you tell your friends and family you're do it, and they give you money so your spouse or children will have something left over after paying for your funeral. You give that money to the National MS Society instead of the funeral director, and donate your body to science or to the good people who make Powerade.
It was a lot of fun and for a good cause, but it was exhausting. I don't think I've ever done a single activity for so many hours in a row that didn't involve either a pillow or a space bar.
The next day, I'm off to Spain!
My excuse for coming to Spain is that Loreena McKennitt is putting on a series of concerts here, finally coming out of her long hiatus from music. So she's performing at the Alhambra in Granada for small crowds and for some people who want to create a DVD and air it on PBS.
As I write this, the plane is dropping towards Madrid. I think the idea of combining the concept of roads with the concept of straight lines originated in the U.S. From above, European towns look more circular, expanding from a central point until they encounter a natural obstacle like a mountain or river. Then the town spreads out along that boundary. They look like raindrops hitting pavement in slow motion.
Oh shit. Roundabouts.
More later!
7.04.2006
Movie Review: The Lake House
Keanu! It's Keanu Reeves! Neo! Ted! He's back! Whoa! We haven't seen him since John Constantine, when he was a reincarnated demon or something. He's going to try again to be a romantic lead.
And Sandra Bullock too. I thought she only did Miss Congeniality movies now, but I guess she's always up for a Speed reunion. That poor girl has been about to become the next Julia Roberts for about 15 years.
Surely with these two, they would do something big. Maybe a movie where they were in a plane than couldn't be more than 15 feet off the ground? Some sort of Matrix/The Net hybrid? Something where Keanu is dour and Sandra is perky? It better be something huge to compete with Superman or the new Pirates of the Caribbean film. Maybe a frustrating love story? Cha-CHING!
The Lake House isn't all that bad, if you go in prepared -- meaning caffeinated. There's some time travel, which is almost always done badly. Keanu isn't exactly Captain Kirk when it's time to smooth-talk the ladies. He's more of a Captain Hook. And Sandra, cute'n'perky though she may be, doesn't carry the gravitas of a Cate Blanchett or even a Dakota Fanning. No revelations there. The problem was that the characters themselves were teeth-crackingly stupid and more self-absorbed than a black hole.
Keanu is either a grumpy construction foreman or a grumpy architect, I can't tell. I never saw Mike Brady wearing a hardhat. He's got a metrosexual younger brother and a distant, unaffectionate dad. Dad is played by Christopher Plummer, who has finally come full circle in his career. Plummer has taken every role he could since The Sound of Music to distance himself from Captain Von Trapp, including playing a Klingon. Maybe after playing a Nazi sympathizer last time out, he's decided to go back to his absentee dad origins.
Sandra is some kind of medical doctor. She seems perfectly nice -- it's Sandra Bullock, fer chrissakes -- but a little glum. Her personal life's been in the crapper for a couple years, since her fiancé caught her smooching some stranger at her own birthday party. She reads too much Jane Austen, too.
The film opens with Sandra moving out of a house next to a lake someplace, and Keanu moving in. Keanu gets a note from Sandra saying he's going to love the house and please forward her mail. But Keanu knows the house has been clearly abandoned for years, since it was built by his father. He writes back to tell Sandra she's crazy. She's all "whatever dude, at least I know it's 2006 not 2004 when I date my letters."
They work it out -- Keanu and Sandra live in the same house exactly two-years-to-the-second apart, but communicate because of a magic mailbox that passes their letters back and forth through time. Very romantic, but I don't see how sharing their utility bills would bring two people together.
"Your gas bill showed up. Is global warming not a threat in the future? Looks like you're trying to heat the whole county, dumbass. I think that Ya-Ya Sisterhood thing rotted your brains."
"Well, ha ha, Mr. Buys-Porn-On-Pay-Per-View. Did you enjoy Brassiere to Eternity, Johnny Mnemonic?"
No, really, it's all just their own gushy love letters that get sent. If you watch through the credits, or wake up at the end of them, you can see actual samples of their notes. Here's one of Sandra's:
Indubitably, it is indeed fascinating how two discrete individual such as we can find ourselves communicating across a nominally impenetrable gulf in the space-time continuum (or at least the time continuum, since we seem to occupy the same space! But forgive my little bon mot.) Indeed, it remains fascinating that we have managed to gestate legitimate amorous feelings, as we are unable to physiologically react to our pheromones, which is often necessary for such feelings to be engendered and, indeed, reciprocated.
And Keanu's, while more terse, were just as heartfelt:
Because of exchanges like this, they quickly fall in love. Keanu has an advantage because she tells him stories about her past, so he knows where she is in his time and shows up to stalk her. It was actually him she was smooching at her party, not because she had an idea who he was, but because she's secretly a ho. And he'll do things like plant a tree when she bitches that she wishes there was more shade. (See, she actually moved out of the house at the beginning. But she keeps driving back there to get her mail.) She she does sweet things like finding his father's death certificate, and writes him a nice note when he is grieving -- she's all empathic because she had seen a guy mowed down in Daley Plaza on Valentine's Day right before they started swapping mail, and it really messed her up.
So they decide to meet -- they pick a restaurant to meet in two years for him, tomorrow for her. He doesn't show.
She crawls right up his butt about it and dumps him. It's not like he can explain himself. She figures something happens between then and now to make them break up and she decides not to waste the time. Keanu actually cries in that scene! He has at least 50% more emotions in him than I thought.
Time crawls on. Sandra hooks up with her ex again, and Keanu sort of mopes around. Sandra buys a new loft that needs some renovation, and accidentally hires Keanu's brother to renovate. She sees a sketch of their lake house on the office wall and asks about it, which is when she learns that Keanu died exactly two years ago today, on Valentine's Day 2006, when he was mowed down by a car in Daley Plaza. Even Sandra can piece that together.
She flings him a quick note to tell him to sort of not get run over, and she'll meet him again by the lake house mailbox in exactly two years. She's there sobbing around the mailbox post, and he drives up! They make out as the credits roll.
Ugh.
Okay, I'm going to ignore the whole "how does the time travel work" question. Chalk it up to the angel that used to help George Bailey getting back in the groove. Also, the I'm ignoring the built-in Grandfather Paradox problems.
----clip'n'save!----
WTF is a Grandfather Paradox?
For those of you who don't think you're nerds, a Grandfather Paradox is what you get when you go back in time and change something which removes your ability or desire to go back in time. The name comes from a story where someone travels back and kills his own grandfather before meeting his grandmother. But in that case, the time traveler wouldn't have existed, but then he couldn't have killed his granddad, so he could be born and build a time machine, and so on.
In the context of this movie, Sandra says she wants a tree. Keanu plants one two years earlier. But from her perspective, she would have now always had a tree there and would have no reason to tell Keanu she wanted one, so he wouldn't have known to plant it.
----clip'n'save!----
Instead, let's talk about what you would do if you were communicating from someone in your own future. I can think of two things I'd ask almost immediately:
1. Can I have a good lottery number?
2. Am I alive and well?
Since Sandra must think she has a future (ha ha) with this guy, you'd think she would force a lottery number on him. A quick internet search and she'll be investing in a $300 million payoff. I understand that fabulous wealth doesn't necessarily lead to happiness, but I'm willing to look for happiness from a first-class seat. Money might bring its own problems, but it's not like poverty is some kind of utopia.
Yet I can't wrap my mind around why an E.R. doctor wouldn't think to check on any medical problems her boyfriend-of-the-past would have, in case something comes up like cancer or heart problems or getting squashed by a car in Daley Plaza. She thought to look up his FATHER but not him? When he didn't make the dinner, she knew it was because he didn't love her anymore, not because he was dead? She was first on the scene after the car wreck and she never looked at his face or learned his name? What a bitch. And he didn't think of it either, because he has a brick for a brain.
Also... she happens to walk into his brother's office, without knowing it was Keanu's brother, two years after he died, but with JUST ENOUGH TIME left to drive back to the lake and leave him a message, which he gets even though he doesn't live there anymore? The dénouement here couldn't be any sloppier. Keanu's brother might has well have said "The last thing he said to me was 'I am going back to the lake house to check for something and I will be leaving there at exactly 11:21'.. oh, look, there is just enough time to get there before 11:21, which as I said is when he left the house two years ago today to go die."
By the time Keanu drives up at the end, he has four years invested in this neurotic tease. Something like that could drive a guy crazy and turn him into a vicious mass murderer that would have been better off as street pizza. Would it be great if by saving Keanu's life, Sandra destroyed Western civilization? If you saw A Walk in the Clouds, you know this already happened. If you saw Matrix: Revolutions, you know we deserved it.
I'll give this film credit for one thing: the two leads are the same age, boldly breaking the Michael Bay Age Equivalency Standard: (male age)-12=(female age). Both Sandra and Keanu are 41 years old. Keanu should be paired with someone like Reese Witherspoon. Sandra is just the right age for Liam Neeson. (Or Mr. T -- You know you would watch a love story between Sandra Bullock and Mr. T.)
I left the theater (at a dead run) not knowing what to make of this movie. I believe it's meant as a parable about treasuring every moment you have with your loved ones, or maybe an extended aphorism about how love can conquer all, even time. But all I got was "don't be so distracted by cute girls that you wander into traffic." Heck of a life lesson, that.
So the summer continues on. Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves have both let us down. Johnny Depp -- save us!
And Sandra Bullock too. I thought she only did Miss Congeniality movies now, but I guess she's always up for a Speed reunion. That poor girl has been about to become the next Julia Roberts for about 15 years.
Surely with these two, they would do something big. Maybe a movie where they were in a plane than couldn't be more than 15 feet off the ground? Some sort of Matrix/The Net hybrid? Something where Keanu is dour and Sandra is perky? It better be something huge to compete with Superman or the new Pirates of the Caribbean film. Maybe a frustrating love story? Cha-CHING!
The Lake House isn't all that bad, if you go in prepared -- meaning caffeinated. There's some time travel, which is almost always done badly. Keanu isn't exactly Captain Kirk when it's time to smooth-talk the ladies. He's more of a Captain Hook. And Sandra, cute'n'perky though she may be, doesn't carry the gravitas of a Cate Blanchett or even a Dakota Fanning. No revelations there. The problem was that the characters themselves were teeth-crackingly stupid and more self-absorbed than a black hole.
Keanu is either a grumpy construction foreman or a grumpy architect, I can't tell. I never saw Mike Brady wearing a hardhat. He's got a metrosexual younger brother and a distant, unaffectionate dad. Dad is played by Christopher Plummer, who has finally come full circle in his career. Plummer has taken every role he could since The Sound of Music to distance himself from Captain Von Trapp, including playing a Klingon. Maybe after playing a Nazi sympathizer last time out, he's decided to go back to his absentee dad origins.
Sandra is some kind of medical doctor. She seems perfectly nice -- it's Sandra Bullock, fer chrissakes -- but a little glum. Her personal life's been in the crapper for a couple years, since her fiancé caught her smooching some stranger at her own birthday party. She reads too much Jane Austen, too.
The film opens with Sandra moving out of a house next to a lake someplace, and Keanu moving in. Keanu gets a note from Sandra saying he's going to love the house and please forward her mail. But Keanu knows the house has been clearly abandoned for years, since it was built by his father. He writes back to tell Sandra she's crazy. She's all "whatever dude, at least I know it's 2006 not 2004 when I date my letters."
They work it out -- Keanu and Sandra live in the same house exactly two-years-to-the-second apart, but communicate because of a magic mailbox that passes their letters back and forth through time. Very romantic, but I don't see how sharing their utility bills would bring two people together.
"Your gas bill showed up. Is global warming not a threat in the future? Looks like you're trying to heat the whole county, dumbass. I think that Ya-Ya Sisterhood thing rotted your brains."
"Well, ha ha, Mr. Buys-Porn-On-Pay-Per-View. Did you enjoy Brassiere to Eternity, Johnny Mnemonic?"
No, really, it's all just their own gushy love letters that get sent. If you watch through the credits, or wake up at the end of them, you can see actual samples of their notes. Here's one of Sandra's:
Indubitably, it is indeed fascinating how two discrete individual such as we can find ourselves communicating across a nominally impenetrable gulf in the space-time continuum (or at least the time continuum, since we seem to occupy the same space! But forgive my little bon mot.) Indeed, it remains fascinating that we have managed to gestate legitimate amorous feelings, as we are unable to physiologically react to our pheromones, which is often necessary for such feelings to be engendered and, indeed, reciprocated.
And Keanu's, while more terse, were just as heartfelt:
Because of exchanges like this, they quickly fall in love. Keanu has an advantage because she tells him stories about her past, so he knows where she is in his time and shows up to stalk her. It was actually him she was smooching at her party, not because she had an idea who he was, but because she's secretly a ho. And he'll do things like plant a tree when she bitches that she wishes there was more shade. (See, she actually moved out of the house at the beginning. But she keeps driving back there to get her mail.) She she does sweet things like finding his father's death certificate, and writes him a nice note when he is grieving -- she's all empathic because she had seen a guy mowed down in Daley Plaza on Valentine's Day right before they started swapping mail, and it really messed her up.
So they decide to meet -- they pick a restaurant to meet in two years for him, tomorrow for her. He doesn't show.
She crawls right up his butt about it and dumps him. It's not like he can explain himself. She figures something happens between then and now to make them break up and she decides not to waste the time. Keanu actually cries in that scene! He has at least 50% more emotions in him than I thought.
Time crawls on. Sandra hooks up with her ex again, and Keanu sort of mopes around. Sandra buys a new loft that needs some renovation, and accidentally hires Keanu's brother to renovate. She sees a sketch of their lake house on the office wall and asks about it, which is when she learns that Keanu died exactly two years ago today, on Valentine's Day 2006, when he was mowed down by a car in Daley Plaza. Even Sandra can piece that together.
She flings him a quick note to tell him to sort of not get run over, and she'll meet him again by the lake house mailbox in exactly two years. She's there sobbing around the mailbox post, and he drives up! They make out as the credits roll.
Ugh.
Okay, I'm going to ignore the whole "how does the time travel work" question. Chalk it up to the angel that used to help George Bailey getting back in the groove. Also, the I'm ignoring the built-in Grandfather Paradox problems.
----clip'n'save!----
WTF is a Grandfather Paradox?
For those of you who don't think you're nerds, a Grandfather Paradox is what you get when you go back in time and change something which removes your ability or desire to go back in time. The name comes from a story where someone travels back and kills his own grandfather before meeting his grandmother. But in that case, the time traveler wouldn't have existed, but then he couldn't have killed his granddad, so he could be born and build a time machine, and so on.
In the context of this movie, Sandra says she wants a tree. Keanu plants one two years earlier. But from her perspective, she would have now always had a tree there and would have no reason to tell Keanu she wanted one, so he wouldn't have known to plant it.
----clip'n'save!----
Instead, let's talk about what you would do if you were communicating from someone in your own future. I can think of two things I'd ask almost immediately:
1. Can I have a good lottery number?
2. Am I alive and well?
Since Sandra must think she has a future (ha ha) with this guy, you'd think she would force a lottery number on him. A quick internet search and she'll be investing in a $300 million payoff. I understand that fabulous wealth doesn't necessarily lead to happiness, but I'm willing to look for happiness from a first-class seat. Money might bring its own problems, but it's not like poverty is some kind of utopia.
Yet I can't wrap my mind around why an E.R. doctor wouldn't think to check on any medical problems her boyfriend-of-the-past would have, in case something comes up like cancer or heart problems or getting squashed by a car in Daley Plaza. She thought to look up his FATHER but not him? When he didn't make the dinner, she knew it was because he didn't love her anymore, not because he was dead? She was first on the scene after the car wreck and she never looked at his face or learned his name? What a bitch. And he didn't think of it either, because he has a brick for a brain.
Also... she happens to walk into his brother's office, without knowing it was Keanu's brother, two years after he died, but with JUST ENOUGH TIME left to drive back to the lake and leave him a message, which he gets even though he doesn't live there anymore? The dénouement here couldn't be any sloppier. Keanu's brother might has well have said "The last thing he said to me was 'I am going back to the lake house to check for something and I will be leaving there at exactly 11:21'.. oh, look, there is just enough time to get there before 11:21, which as I said is when he left the house two years ago today to go die."
By the time Keanu drives up at the end, he has four years invested in this neurotic tease. Something like that could drive a guy crazy and turn him into a vicious mass murderer that would have been better off as street pizza. Would it be great if by saving Keanu's life, Sandra destroyed Western civilization? If you saw A Walk in the Clouds, you know this already happened. If you saw Matrix: Revolutions, you know we deserved it.
I'll give this film credit for one thing: the two leads are the same age, boldly breaking the Michael Bay Age Equivalency Standard: (male age)-12=(female age). Both Sandra and Keanu are 41 years old. Keanu should be paired with someone like Reese Witherspoon. Sandra is just the right age for Liam Neeson. (Or Mr. T -- You know you would watch a love story between Sandra Bullock and Mr. T.)
I left the theater (at a dead run) not knowing what to make of this movie. I believe it's meant as a parable about treasuring every moment you have with your loved ones, or maybe an extended aphorism about how love can conquer all, even time. But all I got was "don't be so distracted by cute girls that you wander into traffic." Heck of a life lesson, that.
So the summer continues on. Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves have both let us down. Johnny Depp -- save us!
6.15.2006
Movie Review: The Omen
They don't make the Anti-Christ like they used to. Or maybe they make him exactly like they used to, and we're too callous to be frightened. When I think of the Anti-Christ (which I only do when my TiVo has evilly recorded The 700 Club), I think of a superhero that uses his powers for evil. Like Superman when he gets near that red kryptonite. I don't think of an elected official that passes laws not in our best interest.
I never saw the original movie from 1976. I think I'm a sort of a demonic possession "tweener" -- too young for The Omen and The Exorcist when they first came out, and too jaded to find them scary now. When I was a kid, I had Black Sabbath, and they were plenty Satanic enough for me, thank you. I am sure that in the 70s, the book of Revelations was quite the psychological thriller. But now we have terrorists and bird flu and global warming and Hot Pockets and Michael Bay. Even hard-line fundamentalists would only be truly terrified of the Anti-Christ if he showed up and wanted to marry another guy.
How do modern filmmakers with our modern issues handle the apocalypse? Let's see.
First they put the very talented Liev Schrieber in Gregory Peck's old role. Liev is a great actor waiting for a great movie. In this one, he's Robert Thorn, U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, and husband to Julia Stiles. Julia is best known (by me) for being confused with Kate Bosworth almost every time I hear her name. I guess she's a good actress too, but in the few movies I've seen her, she is either perpetually annoyed or extremely worried. She's more of the latter here. She is also 14 years younger than her co-star, which fits nicely with the Hollywood Male-Female Age Equivalency Formula.
We open in Rome, where a Vatican astronomer spots some kind of freaky comet coming our way. I was surprised to see it, because I had forgotten the Vatican had an astronomer. I don't think any of us knew there was one until last year when he said that Intelligent Design wasn't science. What *is* science, at least to his movie counterpart, is a literal interpretation of the signs of the apocalypse in the Book of Revelations. He goes in front of some Vatican higher-ups and points out that after careful deliberation and scientific calculations, we are well and truly SCREWED. However you say that in Latin. (Sulum est sursum shittus creekum?)
Everyone at the Vatican throws up their hands, sighs in exasperation and also in Italian, and wanders off to get drunk. Maybe. We don't see them again. Maybe they have secret Satan-proof shelters, as Dan Brown speculates in his forthcoming book The Glory Holes.
Then we meet Liev, heading to the hospital where Julia is having complications giving birth. When he get there, the priest tells him that the complications were so bad that his actual baby died so they had to replace it with another baby whose mother croaked. All fair and aboveboard. But don't tell Julia -- you know how women can get about things like that. Maybe she won't notice the weird "Inspected by #666" sticker on his head or the "Made in France" sticker on his butt. His name is Damien.
Damien grows up about like you'd expect for his first five years: mostly normal, but a little creepy. Unusually healthy, too. On his fifth birthday, his nanny appears to be getting secret instructions from a gorgeous black German shepherd, and she hangs herself off the roof of the house in front of the paparazzi. You know what a huge media event the birthday of a U.S. ambassador's child is. You remember the circus last February when John Campbell, the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, threw a bash for his daughter Melissa? But for Liev and Julia, things start to go downhill.
First up is hiring Creepy Nanny Mia Farrow. It's clear that she's one of the two people on earth who know what Damien really is, and she has made the prudent choice to ally herself with him. She'll be the Auntie Christ. Probably not a fast track to Heaven, but since the "Pro-Christ" never shows in these films, bet on the strongest horse. She gets him a hellhound -- not the black Alsatian we saw before, which is unfortunate, but a standard growly pit bull. Maybe we're not scared of Satan anymore because he's JUST A BIG SILLY PUPPY! THAT'S RIGHT! HEEZA G'BOY!
Note: As I write this, my own hellhound, Arrow, is trying to jump up on the couch with a bone that's almost too big for him to handle. The armrest keeps knocking it loose and it clatters to the floor, leaving him sitting on the couch all confused and a little pissed. He's just tried for the third time. I'm having a hard time working up fear for an Anti-Christ who gives any responsibility to a dog.
Then the other person who knows about Damien's real job shows up: Father Brennan, an ancient scary priest who was at the hospital when they juggled babies. I'm no theologian, and I am certainly not a Catholic, so I shouldn't tell the Vatican its business. But some raving bug-eyed loon shouting "I know who can show you how to kill your son" is not going to capture the heart of an intelligent, educated person, or even a politician. My advice to the pope is to find some charismatic, soft-spoken philosophical type who will provide context and backstory before jumping right to the punchline. I understand the value of an executive summary before any detailed presentation, but even I know when to not open with "give me a raise, you diaper-wearing plutocrats." The freak show might play in the sticks, or maybe even in the 70s, but modern men require a modern touch before they snuff their children.
Father Brennan wasn't creepy for long, though. Once he gave Liev his marching orders, he (Father Brennan) was skewered by a falling steeple and minced by a shattered stained-glass window. That Satan loves his irony.
Then David Thewlis shows up. He's a photographer here, but to me he's going to be Professor Lupin until he dies. But he's been part of the London Times U.S. Ambassador beat (cushy!) and has been snapping pictures since the first nanny bit it. He's noticed that on pictures of the old nanny, there is a ghostly noose around her neck. On pictures of Father Brennan, there has been a long, pointed shaft gradually getting closer to his chest. He wants to recruit Liev into figuring out the meaning behind that, partly because he loves a mystery, but mostly because a picture of himself has a wide line through the neck. Father Brennan had given the name and address of the guy who knows how to take care of your minor Anti-Christ infestations, so David and Liev are off!
Good timing too, because Damien has managed to push Julia off a third-story balcony. She survived the fall, but is immobilized enough for Mia Farrow to kill her in the hospital later. (This is a different one from the baby-switching hospital. No wonder people want some sort of health-care reform.) This gives Liev additional motivation for hanging out with David, apart from begging for a spot in a future Harry Potter movie.
He has another chance to beg, because the Anti-Christ exterminator is Michael Gambon, current grumpy Dumbledore. He plays someone named Bugenhagen, which I'm told is German for "has bugs." There's quite a ritual involved, with some very specific stabbing in front of a church altar. Damien will probably resist this procedure, and Mia might strenuously object. Liev dithers until David gets his head chopped off. Looks like Liev isn't going to dress in drag and play Tonks after all.
We're almost to the end.
Liev gets back home, traps the pit bull in the cellar and snatches Damien. He's got to run Mia over before she'll give it a rest. He's really good with those cars with the steering wheel on the wrong side. But in the excitement, he plows through his own security gates, agitating the cops. Probably squashed three paparazzi, too.
He gets to a church pretty quick. There are plenty in London. Damien is squealing an unconvincing "please don't Daddy," which leaves Liev unmoved. What does move him is the shot from the cop's assault rifle. Not even time for him to shout "diplomatic immunity!" Not much of a long-range planner, that Liev. You'd think someone that dumb would get a post someplace other than Great Britain.
In the last scene, we see Damien holding hands with the President, as he (Damien) (but also the President) turns and gives an evil-but-corny smile to the camera.
Okay, you're wondering where the scary parts were, right? So am I. The implication that evil is going to bubble up and cover the earth doesn't grip the mind like it used to. Not in a world where Garfield movies get sequels. There were moments that made you jump, but it was because the music went from nothing to REALLY LOUD right as something jumped onscreen. When Satan's big plot is to get into politics and sign evil treaties or cut the ribbons on evil new shopping centers, I am not left gasping. In fact, I'm bored. Bored by the movie, and bored in anticipation of the jokes about how this is really a documentary and "Damien" is Dick Cheney's middle name.
But I'm not much of a fan of this genre. Long-time review readers would say I'm not a fan of any genre, but that's not true -- I get squishy for heist films, even mediocre ones like Ocean's 12. And I love submarine movies. If there was a bank on a sub and someone planned to rob it, I would take out a second mortgage to buy tickets. But I'm not crazy about horror.
And I think I am ruined for Satan movies. I'm not religious enough to worry a lot about Hell, and I saw the Anti-Christ a week ago, crawling out of the womb of a hot Satanist. When I found out that Damien's real mom was an actual dog, I couldn't help but wonder if his real dad was a deceased chicken.
If you like your quiet, sullen Satan, this might be the movie for you. Liev is certainly good enough to convey the anguish of a man who has to kill his child before the world ends, but I wonder who he followed around to learn the character. For the rest of you, give it a miss. We have too much real evil in our lives without buying tickets for more. Cute puppies, though.
Which reminds me -- stay tuned next time! Keanu!
I never saw the original movie from 1976. I think I'm a sort of a demonic possession "tweener" -- too young for The Omen and The Exorcist when they first came out, and too jaded to find them scary now. When I was a kid, I had Black Sabbath, and they were plenty Satanic enough for me, thank you. I am sure that in the 70s, the book of Revelations was quite the psychological thriller. But now we have terrorists and bird flu and global warming and Hot Pockets and Michael Bay. Even hard-line fundamentalists would only be truly terrified of the Anti-Christ if he showed up and wanted to marry another guy.
How do modern filmmakers with our modern issues handle the apocalypse? Let's see.
First they put the very talented Liev Schrieber in Gregory Peck's old role. Liev is a great actor waiting for a great movie. In this one, he's Robert Thorn, U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, and husband to Julia Stiles. Julia is best known (by me) for being confused with Kate Bosworth almost every time I hear her name. I guess she's a good actress too, but in the few movies I've seen her, she is either perpetually annoyed or extremely worried. She's more of the latter here. She is also 14 years younger than her co-star, which fits nicely with the Hollywood Male-Female Age Equivalency Formula.
We open in Rome, where a Vatican astronomer spots some kind of freaky comet coming our way. I was surprised to see it, because I had forgotten the Vatican had an astronomer. I don't think any of us knew there was one until last year when he said that Intelligent Design wasn't science. What *is* science, at least to his movie counterpart, is a literal interpretation of the signs of the apocalypse in the Book of Revelations. He goes in front of some Vatican higher-ups and points out that after careful deliberation and scientific calculations, we are well and truly SCREWED. However you say that in Latin. (Sulum est sursum shittus creekum?)
Everyone at the Vatican throws up their hands, sighs in exasperation and also in Italian, and wanders off to get drunk. Maybe. We don't see them again. Maybe they have secret Satan-proof shelters, as Dan Brown speculates in his forthcoming book The Glory Holes.
Then we meet Liev, heading to the hospital where Julia is having complications giving birth. When he get there, the priest tells him that the complications were so bad that his actual baby died so they had to replace it with another baby whose mother croaked. All fair and aboveboard. But don't tell Julia -- you know how women can get about things like that. Maybe she won't notice the weird "Inspected by #666" sticker on his head or the "Made in France" sticker on his butt. His name is Damien.
Damien grows up about like you'd expect for his first five years: mostly normal, but a little creepy. Unusually healthy, too. On his fifth birthday, his nanny appears to be getting secret instructions from a gorgeous black German shepherd, and she hangs herself off the roof of the house in front of the paparazzi. You know what a huge media event the birthday of a U.S. ambassador's child is. You remember the circus last February when John Campbell, the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, threw a bash for his daughter Melissa? But for Liev and Julia, things start to go downhill.
First up is hiring Creepy Nanny Mia Farrow. It's clear that she's one of the two people on earth who know what Damien really is, and she has made the prudent choice to ally herself with him. She'll be the Auntie Christ. Probably not a fast track to Heaven, but since the "Pro-Christ" never shows in these films, bet on the strongest horse. She gets him a hellhound -- not the black Alsatian we saw before, which is unfortunate, but a standard growly pit bull. Maybe we're not scared of Satan anymore because he's JUST A BIG SILLY PUPPY! THAT'S RIGHT! HEEZA G'BOY!
Note: As I write this, my own hellhound, Arrow, is trying to jump up on the couch with a bone that's almost too big for him to handle. The armrest keeps knocking it loose and it clatters to the floor, leaving him sitting on the couch all confused and a little pissed. He's just tried for the third time. I'm having a hard time working up fear for an Anti-Christ who gives any responsibility to a dog.
Then the other person who knows about Damien's real job shows up: Father Brennan, an ancient scary priest who was at the hospital when they juggled babies. I'm no theologian, and I am certainly not a Catholic, so I shouldn't tell the Vatican its business. But some raving bug-eyed loon shouting "I know who can show you how to kill your son" is not going to capture the heart of an intelligent, educated person, or even a politician. My advice to the pope is to find some charismatic, soft-spoken philosophical type who will provide context and backstory before jumping right to the punchline. I understand the value of an executive summary before any detailed presentation, but even I know when to not open with "give me a raise, you diaper-wearing plutocrats." The freak show might play in the sticks, or maybe even in the 70s, but modern men require a modern touch before they snuff their children.
Father Brennan wasn't creepy for long, though. Once he gave Liev his marching orders, he (Father Brennan) was skewered by a falling steeple and minced by a shattered stained-glass window. That Satan loves his irony.
Then David Thewlis shows up. He's a photographer here, but to me he's going to be Professor Lupin until he dies. But he's been part of the London Times U.S. Ambassador beat (cushy!) and has been snapping pictures since the first nanny bit it. He's noticed that on pictures of the old nanny, there is a ghostly noose around her neck. On pictures of Father Brennan, there has been a long, pointed shaft gradually getting closer to his chest. He wants to recruit Liev into figuring out the meaning behind that, partly because he loves a mystery, but mostly because a picture of himself has a wide line through the neck. Father Brennan had given the name and address of the guy who knows how to take care of your minor Anti-Christ infestations, so David and Liev are off!
Good timing too, because Damien has managed to push Julia off a third-story balcony. She survived the fall, but is immobilized enough for Mia Farrow to kill her in the hospital later. (This is a different one from the baby-switching hospital. No wonder people want some sort of health-care reform.) This gives Liev additional motivation for hanging out with David, apart from begging for a spot in a future Harry Potter movie.
He has another chance to beg, because the Anti-Christ exterminator is Michael Gambon, current grumpy Dumbledore. He plays someone named Bugenhagen, which I'm told is German for "has bugs." There's quite a ritual involved, with some very specific stabbing in front of a church altar. Damien will probably resist this procedure, and Mia might strenuously object. Liev dithers until David gets his head chopped off. Looks like Liev isn't going to dress in drag and play Tonks after all.
We're almost to the end.
Liev gets back home, traps the pit bull in the cellar and snatches Damien. He's got to run Mia over before she'll give it a rest. He's really good with those cars with the steering wheel on the wrong side. But in the excitement, he plows through his own security gates, agitating the cops. Probably squashed three paparazzi, too.
He gets to a church pretty quick. There are plenty in London. Damien is squealing an unconvincing "please don't Daddy," which leaves Liev unmoved. What does move him is the shot from the cop's assault rifle. Not even time for him to shout "diplomatic immunity!" Not much of a long-range planner, that Liev. You'd think someone that dumb would get a post someplace other than Great Britain.
In the last scene, we see Damien holding hands with the President, as he (Damien) (but also the President) turns and gives an evil-but-corny smile to the camera.
Okay, you're wondering where the scary parts were, right? So am I. The implication that evil is going to bubble up and cover the earth doesn't grip the mind like it used to. Not in a world where Garfield movies get sequels. There were moments that made you jump, but it was because the music went from nothing to REALLY LOUD right as something jumped onscreen. When Satan's big plot is to get into politics and sign evil treaties or cut the ribbons on evil new shopping centers, I am not left gasping. In fact, I'm bored. Bored by the movie, and bored in anticipation of the jokes about how this is really a documentary and "Damien" is Dick Cheney's middle name.
But I'm not much of a fan of this genre. Long-time review readers would say I'm not a fan of any genre, but that's not true -- I get squishy for heist films, even mediocre ones like Ocean's 12. And I love submarine movies. If there was a bank on a sub and someone planned to rob it, I would take out a second mortgage to buy tickets. But I'm not crazy about horror.
And I think I am ruined for Satan movies. I'm not religious enough to worry a lot about Hell, and I saw the Anti-Christ a week ago, crawling out of the womb of a hot Satanist. When I found out that Damien's real mom was an actual dog, I couldn't help but wonder if his real dad was a deceased chicken.
If you like your quiet, sullen Satan, this might be the movie for you. Liev is certainly good enough to convey the anguish of a man who has to kill his child before the world ends, but I wonder who he followed around to learn the character. For the rest of you, give it a miss. We have too much real evil in our lives without buying tickets for more. Cute puppies, though.
Which reminds me -- stay tuned next time! Keanu!
