Losing is a disease… as contagious as polio.
Losing is a disease… as contagious as syphilis.
Losing is a disease… as contagious as bubonic plague…
…attacking one… but infecting all.
But curable.
Now, I want you to imagine… you are on a ship at sea…
Gently rocking.
Gently rocking.
Gently rocking.
–The Natural
I wanted to believe the new X-Files movie would be a good follow-up to the first movie and the TV series. I was a fan of both and had high hopes for the new film which Barb and I watched last night. What a stinker.
This is where I’d insert a spoiler alert but I just don’t think there’s anything to spoil. But I’ll give you my fuzzy understanding of the plot after the jump.
The magazine cover has nothing to do with the new film. I just wanted some kind of reminder of Scully and Mulder when they were still hot.
Remember that kid that sat behind you grade school that was always drawing? Ever wonder what happened to him? Well, if he (or she) was as talented as Michael Spooner, he did okay.
Michael (we knew him as Mike back then) and I were classmates 45 years ago in Kennett, MO. Michael and I ran in different crowds but Kennett was a small place and everybody knew everybody.
In a previous post I mentioned that Michael stumbled across smays.com a few days ago and pinged me. He included some old snapshots and his resume, to let me know what he’s been up to.
He got into animation as a Layout Artist with Ralph Bakshi’s feature production of Tolkien’s, Lord of the Rings. He spent some years at Disney where he worked on –just to name a few– Goof Troop, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Emperor’s New Groove, Treasure Planet and Lilo and Stitch. He also assisted on early development design of Dreamworks’ Shrek. And he Co-Art Directed Warner Brothers first full-length animated feature, Quest for Camelot. If you have kids or an appreciation for animation, check out his bio. He was also kind enough to share a dozen or so examples of his work.
I called Michael up this morning and asked him to share some of his adventures and we wound up talking for an hour. I’ve cut the interview into three segments about about 20 minutes each.
Today, Michael owns Spoonerville Animation Design, an independent visual development studio, providing both traditional and CGI design concepts and lives in the western suburbs of Chicago with his writer-wife Beverly, and son Philip.
Michael is a visiting artist and lecturer, presenting in universities, art schools and animation studios throughout the United States.
“After a terrorist bombing kills an American envoy in a foreign country. An investigation leads to an Egyptian who has been living in the United States for years and who is married to an American. He is apprehended when he’s on his way home. The U.S. sends him to the country where the incident occurs for interrogation which includes torture. An American CIA operative observes the interrogation and is at odds whether to keep it going or to stop it.”
Back in the day when people debated the death penalty, you’d sometimes hear the question:
Would it be preferable to execute 100 guilty men, knowing that one of them was innocent… or to let 100 innocent men go free, knowing that one of them was guilty?
In the movie Rendition, Meryl Streep’s character does a spin on that. Something along the lines of it would be worth torturing an innocent man if the use of torture produced intelligence that saved 7,000 lives (in London?).
We watched In the Valley of Elah last night (rented from iTunes). I was pleasantly surprised to learn it was a murder mystery (sort of). Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon all gave powerful performances.
For me the story was about how war can change the people we send to fight it. And I was reminded of one of Tommy Lee Jones’ earlier movies, Rolling Thunder (1977).
It was a so-so movie starring William Devane but Jones owned every scene he was in. He played Cpl. Johnny Vohden, a soldier who had served under Devane’s character in Viet Nam. Johnny is back, but he’s not “back.”
So, when Devane asks him to go down to Mexico to avenge Devane’s murdered family, Tommy Lee gets up, walks into his bedroom, picks up a little gym bag and walks out the door. See the movie.
In In the Valley of Elah, Jones’ son, who is serving in Iraq, is that same burned out soldier with the thousand-yard stare.
TLJ was great in No Country for Old Men, but I thought his performance in Valley of Elah was even better.
Doc Searls –who happens to be the same age as I– draws some insight from the movie No Country for Old Men:
“The central figure, Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem, is a psychopathic killer who personifies death and chance in unequal measure.
His motives? His quarry is money, but that’s just a point on a path. There is no doubt that he will get the money, and that people will die along the way. But death itself has no motive. It is merely inevitable. Like Anton Chigurh. The Terminator, the Alien, the guy DiNiro played in Cape Fear… all the relentless bad guys we’ve known… don’t compare easily with Chigurh. Because all the others could be, and were, defeated.
Death can’t be defeated. In Chigurh, it could only be wounded, because he is death in human form. But he is still death.
Which is on my mind more as I get older. The old men in the movie — Tommy Lee Jones and cohorts of his generation — are barely older than me, if they’re older at all.
Being older, if not yet “old”, requires increased acquaintance with the certainty that Your Time Will Come.
I plan to procrastinate. For some things that’s a helpful skill.”
I’ll be 60 years old next Saturday and, like Doc Searls, mortality has been more on my mind. In coming days I might post a thought or two on birthdays that end in zero and what –if anything– I’ve learned in the last 6 decades (I like the sound of that better than “sixty”). But once the day has come and gone, I’m going to try not to think/write about it.
One of my earliest posts (2/18/02) was a gush about the 1993 film True Romance. I titled the post: “It Ain’t White Boy Day Is It?” …one of many great lines in the movie.
Of the 3,000+ posts here at smays.com, that one still gets the most comments. But I’m more proud of the fact that this post is the #1 Google search result for “white boy day.”
Out of how many results, you ask? Put quotation marks around the phrase: 5,490. No quotation marks: 9,880,000. This is why we blog.
Oliver Stone’s next move is “Bush,” a film focusing on the life and presidency of George W. Bush. Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men) will portray W. In an interview in Variety, Stone says he wants to present a “true portrait of the the man.”
“How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world? It’s like Frank Capra territory on one hand, but I’ll also cover the demons in his private life, his bouts with his dad and his conversion to Christianity, which explains a lot of where he is coming from. It includes his belief that God personally chose him to be president of the United States, and his coming into his own with the stunning, preemptive attack on Iraq. It will contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors.”
I think Oliver Stone is capable of making a good (or great?) movie. I loved Platoon and Wall Street. JFK, not so much. But it sounds like they’re trying to get this movie in theaters by November and that makes me a little suspicious. Why not wait until the guys is out of office?
PS: Bet W loves the choice of Josh Brolin (“Damn! It’s like lookin’ in a mirruh!”)
28 Days Later… was a pretty good zombie movie. But I found I Am Legend way more disturbing. Will Smith did not phone this one in. (I think he gives his all in just about every film I’ve seen him in).
I usually like a good post-apocalyptic yarn but this one… the people behind me kept shushing me because I was saying, "It’s only a movie, it’s only a movie" in my outside voice.
Take the worst thing that anyone can imagine (the extinction of mankind) and cast an actor who can make you believe it for even a few of the 100 minutes… (shudder).
Comment Assignment: Best (?) zombie movies.
Remember the scene in Men in Black where Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith walk in to headquarters and all of the aliens are packing up and fleeing the planet?
Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott announced Monday he will leave a 35-year career in Congress in which he epitomized the Republicans’ political takeover of the South after the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. He becomes the sixth Senate Republican this year to announce retirement. Democrats effectively hold a 51-49 majority in the chamber, including two independents who align themselves with Democrats. Lott’s retirement means that Republicans will have to defend 23 seats in next year’s election, while Democrats have only 12 seats at stake. (AP)
It wasn’t a good sign in the movie, and I’m not sure it’s a good sign now. I’m waiting for someone to discover a GOP Star Ship being constructed in the New Mexico desert.