entertainment | mashby

April 12, 2003

John Q

John Q
Director: Nick Cassavetes
Writer(s): James Kearns Category: Drama / Thriller
MPAA: PG-13
Runtime: 116 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Year: 2002
Tagline: Give a father no options and you leave him no choice.

Plot:Denzel Washington plays John Q, a luckless blue-collar workingman without the insurance needed to cover his son’s emergency heart transplant. Driven to desperation, he holds a hospital’s emergency room hostage until doctors agree to perform the operation. James Woods and Anne Heche are a couple of stubborn hospital staffers. Robert Duvall plays a no-nonesense hostage negotiator and Ray Liotta is a gung ho police chief in this gripping story about the possible consequences of real social ills.

Review: I delayed watching this movie from the simple fact that the previews gave me the impression that this was a “squashed squirrel.” There are two ways to elicit emotion: 1) provide a cliche device, such as a squashed squirrel (who won’t go “awwww” when seeing a small animal hurt?), or 2) earn your audience emotions by providing them with honest writing and believable situations. Unfortunately, John Q goes for the easy cliche almost every time.

April 11, 2003

Oh My Virgin Ears!

Last night I was watching TV and a commercial for Hechts department store came on and to my horror the song used for the ad was ‘Always Something There To Remind Me‘ by Naked Eyes. :O They had changed the lyrics of the hook to ‘Always something there to excite me,’ but there was no mistaking the original song.

This isn’t the first time that a company has bastardized a popular song to peddle their products. I remember back in 1987 when Nike used a single version of “Revolution” as part of a $7 million campaign to sell Nike shoes. I remember thinking at the time that it was no big deal. It was a good song, but it wasn’t part of my cultural history, so I didn’t see the harm in it.

April 10, 2003

Death To Smoochy

Death To Smoochy
Director: Danny DeVito
Writer(s): Adam Resnick
Category: Comedy
MPAA: R
Runtime: 109 min
Country: USA / UK / Germany
Language: English
Year: 2002
Tagline: Get ready for an unexpected hit.

Plot: Danny DeVito directs this dark comedy set in the dog-eat-dog world of children’s television. Kids’ show star Rainbow Randolph (Robin Williams) gets fired over a bribery scandal and is replaced by Smoochy (Edward Norton) — a puffy, purple rhinoceros. When Randolph discovers Smoochy is having an affair with Randolph’s ex-lover Nora (Catherine Keener), a top programming executive at the network, he plots his revenge.

Review: This is an odd little film. It’s funny, but in an off-center kind of way. If you found Fight Club funny (which I thought it was in parts), then you’ll probably find this movie funny as well. Not that they are the same in context, just that their humor is similar in the oblique way at which they approach it.

This is clearly a dark comedy that envelopes itself into a style that is much like the children’s television shows they produce. In fact, I’d venture to say that the style of this film is almost comic book in nature. The lighting is very stark and solid in it’s choice of colors and the characters are almost ripped from the pages of a Dick Tracy comic book, albeit a more modern one.
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April 6, 2003

There’s Gold In Them Thar Low Hung Jeans

Gold Jeans Nothing Quite Like Alienating Your Target Demographic. When I see articles like this one, I just can’t help but get pissed off. First off, let me explain that I don’t think Napster is necessarily the greatest thing to happen to the music industry and that all music should be free. However, I do think that the music industry is the first entertainment industry to feel the brunt of the digital age. The fact that they have responded to this change so poorly is their own fault and not the fault of 3 college kids with access to a few computers.

Back in 1996 I read a book by Nicholas Negroponte entitled “Being Digital.” The basic tenant of the book was that for all the talk of the world entering the “Information Age,” the reality was that the information age was over and that we were actually entering the “digital age.” The difference being that anything that could be delivered digitally would be and that any industry that was not aware of the change and prepared for this change would face severe hardships.
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April 5, 2003

American Pie 2

Director: James B. Rogers
Writer(s): Adam Herz, David H. Steinberg
Category: Comedy
MPAA: R
Runtime: 104 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Year: 2001
Tagline: “This Summer It’s All About Sticking Together.”

Plot: Jim, Oz, Kevin and Stifler are back — and hornier than ever! After their first year of college, the gang reunites and rents a beach house for the summer. Jim (Jason Biggs) prepares for a reunion with Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth), but finds he’s falling for band camp maven Michelle (Alyson Hannigan). Substitute Super Glue and a porno tape for the apple pie from the first movie, and you’ve got a helluva sticky situation. Continue Reading

April 5, 2003

They Walk Among Us

I was just watching Conan O’ Brian on TV and they had Vin Diesel as a guest. He was promoting his new movie A Man Apart. The first time I remember seeing Vin was in Pitch Black, which I thought was an ok movie, but Vin’s performance was pretty cool. Then I saw him in The Fast And The Furious. The movie was ok and his performance was so-so, but it was XXX that did it in for me. That movie was complete garbage. So, my overall impression of Vin Diesel was pretty low.

March 20, 2003

Almost Normal

Well, things have almost returned to normal. I stopped for lunch about 4pm and I noticed that all the major networks were carrying the war now and even MTV was doing some limited coverage. Most of their coverage was of the protests in New York City, but at least their attention is now on what is happening.

Of course seeing reporters in Kuwait donning gas masks still adds a bit of surreal effect.

March 20, 2003

Totally Surreal Morning

Teletubbies This morning was totally surreal. I’m trying to get back to an early morning schedule, so I’ve begun waking up earlier and will keep pushing back the time I wake up until I reach 5am. A few years ago, I shifted my internal clock and was able to wake up at 5am every morning and believe it or not, it was a good experience. 🙂 However, it seems that in the “computer world” things tend to run late into the night and I’ve slipped back to my normal routine of staying up quite late.

So, here I am up at 6:00am and I go downstairs to do my AM Yoga. 20 minutes later, I rewind the video and turn on the TV – the war with Iraq has begun. I quickly absorb the news of what has happened thus far and am glad to hear that nothing severe has happened to our troops thus far. We’re in the early stages, but so far so good.

March 17, 2003

Nine Inch Nails In Church

I went to church yesterday. They played a Johnny Cash video. It’s a Nine Inch Nails cover called ‘Hurt.’ It blew me away and I cry everytime I see it. My words simply don’t do it justice. The video and about the video.

March 15, 2003

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

There’s an old Louisiana saying, ‘When you’re up to your ass in alligators is when you remember you were supposed to drain the swamp.’ 2002 was my year of the alligator and luckily Tony Ching of the San Francisco Palm Users Group recommended this book to me. What struck me by his recommendation was not the level of excitement he had about the book (like my excitement over The E-Myth Revisited), but rather the Zen like calm he had when discussing it.

David Allen is president of David Allen & Co. and has more than twenty years’ experience as a management consultant, executive coach, and educator. He has been a keynote speaker and productivity facilitator for organizations such as Oracle, L. L. Bean, Microsoft, Lockheed, and the World Bank.His work has been featured in Fast Company, Fortune, and many other publications. With a background like that I was really expecting a dry and very business like book. However, in the first chapter he referrs to “flow,” and to reach a state where your mental state is a “mind like water,” I knew that this was going to be a different kind of book. That is not to say that just because you throw in a few Eastern philosophies you have a good book. Obviously, you have to have real-world solutions and not just another collection of buzz words and this book delivers. The premise of the book is that you have to have a system that works irregardless of what technology you use. In other words, a new piece of software, or a new type of binder isn’t going to do it. You need a fool-proof system that can adapt as you need to.

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